There's a lot of immediate firsts in life that can scare you. First interviews, first dates. Ultimately first impressions, in general.
In a perfect world, we'd like to say that we understand every minoot nuance of a partnership. The fact remains, that we are just as human as anyone else. That is, we strive to understand aligning goals to the best of our ability, but admittedly and inevitably, some things get lost in translation.
This is not to say one should chameleon to another business' goals. You have your mission, and they have theirs. Like a Venn Diagram, there is overlap. Finding out how our goals with partners align is the bread and butter of it all. We don't want to force a partner to be us, neither force ourselves to be them.
So what is the overlap with partners? Like anything, there is no one right answer. It is relatively subjective and ultimately, up to you and your partners to understand not only how your goals align, but when.
The when is just as crucial. It is imperative that while retaining your mission statement and value proposition as a business, you let yourself remain dynamic and open to new ideas.
Evolution and momentum are symbiotic when it comes to a business. When we started as a Facebook page, we remained mindful of the growth and forward movement of the nonprofit. In short, we wanted to scale our business. We retained the same mindset and value proposition, but wanted to do so on a city wide level, rather than Facebook community.
While keeping the same structure, we wanted to reach Fort Worth in its entirety and improve community on a larger scale. This is not to say we didn't want partners. Quite the opposite. As we scaled, we wanted to scale with our partners.
Remember that idea of evolution and momentum? We were not talking about just ourselves. We seek to enable our partners to have that same momentum and progression with the idea that we build and improve on one another. Creating a cylical environment with our partners is what we strive for, and we wouldn't want to have it otherwise.
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