Ignore people at your peril

“It feels like we have a ‘ball and chain’ holding us back. Their regular cycling of staff is not helping us to develop a long-term relationship with sound working practices that allow innovation.” Programme Director, UK Defence Contractor

 Do you know who your ‘king-pins’ are, their skills, experience and knowledge and, their career plans? Joint enterprises are hard to manage because you need to choreograph the operations of two or more organisations. Thus, they are very vulnerable to personnel issues around the training and retention of key people. Any one of these can result in unhappy, frustrated people and an inefficient operation or loss of service. How often have you seen someone leave your organisation and chaos ensues? Have they gone and successfully set up shop using the ideas you ignored?

 ”They change their Buyers often to prevent them getting too cosy with us and we wind-up training them!” MD, Meat Processing Company

 In your organisation you might expect the HR department to handle much of this however, within an alliance the Relationship Managers jointly have overall responsibility for performance and especially for the smooth running of the interfaces. It’s well-motivated people who make these work smoothly, so the RMs will need to answer these questions:

·         Who are your key people and where do they fit in the joint organisation?

·         What skills and experience do they have?

·         What additional skills and experience are needed?

·         How do they acquire them?

·         Do we need additional posts?

·         Are we actively recruiting to fill gaps?

·         Is there succession planning such as official deputies?

 “We have realised that building relationships is an important capability for our keen young managers.” Logistics Director, Global Food Manufacturer

 RMs need to stay on top of this vital function and above all be responsive to the way the collaboration is changing. The policy and plans must be publicised widely and updated regularly.

 If you put your people first and develop them in the right way, you will create a dynamic, innovative environment. This will become a strategic capability which will give your enterprise a clear, competitive advantage.

 “We are actively looking to move the relationship forward. We have new guys looking for new opportunities and we hope that they will get the same emotional attachment that we did.” Regional Director, Global Confectionery Manufacturer