Are You Ready for A Collaborative Alliance?

Collaborative Alliances can be a great strategy for expanding your visibility and  profits while creating positive impact for all parties involved.  While there may be no legalities involvled in creating this type of alliance, there should be plenty of  preparation, discovery, intent, and written objectives if you are to experience a truly successful collaboration.

Alliances need to be both intelligent and value focused if they are to be one of the anchors to building a truly powerful expansion strategy.  Intelligent collaborative alliances focus on creating an even playing field for both you and your alliance partner.  You and your potential partner need to be crystal clear on what you want and want you will  contribute to the alliance.

Think with the Collaborative Factor in Mind – beginning with a framework for  assesing a win-win alliance: 

Assess:  Do you have a clear and articulated understanding of what you want from the alliance?  How will this alliance serve your target markets, customers, etc.?

Locate:  Locate venues and other networking opportunties that will allow you to meet like-minded potential collaborative opportunities.

Evaluate:  Apply a process for evaluating the success and collaborative-ability(TM) of your potential alliance that includes:  Objectives, Roles, Resources, Reach& Access, Metrics, Legalities.

Implement:  Do you have a way to effectively deliver and manage the alliance including communication among the alliance partners?

Collaboration is about cooperation with your competition as well as complementary marketing but one thing collaboration isn’t is staying “silo-ed” or working in a vaccum.  Collaboration obviously won’t happy alone – you need step into the mindset of a Collaborative Leader.

ABOUT Janet Wise:  is the Founder/CEO of The Collaborative Factor.  An online collaborative community and NYC based entrepreneurial network for small business, solopreneurs and those interested in leveraging the power, acumen and support of a select group of entrepreneurs working together through inspired action so that big ideas don’t just double they explode – exponentially.   A former corporate training and development expert with a Masters in HR development, Janet was responsible for managing global leadership curriculum,  professional development and high potential leadership programs at Fortune 500 companies; she is skilled professional facilitator and natural collaborator.   www.wisesolutions4u.com or www.wisepowernetwork.ning.com  for more information.