RESILIENCE: THE LIFE JACKET OF A POWERHOUSE PARTNER

From a systems perspective, four characteristics combine to give a Powerhouse Partner the resilience it needs to survive and prosper in the Dual Age of Information and Connections, as shown in Table 12 and described below.

Table 12: Resilience of a Powerhouse Partner

DRIVER OR INHIBITOR	WORKFORCE	PRODUCTS & SERVICES	SALES & SERVICE
	SELF-DIRECTING SYSTEM
Purpose Aimlessness	Spirited Disheartened	Needed/Wanted Unneeded/Unwanted	Enthusiastic Lackluster
	SELF-LEARNING SYSTEM
Openness Protectionism	Savvy Disoriented	Up-to-date Out-of-date	Knowledgeable Uninformed
	SELF-RENEWING SYSTEM
Abundance Scarcity	Imaginative Stale	Innovative Boring	Customer focused Product focused
	SELF-REINFORCING SYSTEM
Connectedness Isolation	Collaborative Combative	High quality Mediocre	Personalized Patronizing

• Self-Directing. A Powerhouse Partner knows how to keep its eye on the ball and how to get back on track after a setback.

• Self-Learning. A Powerhouse Partner promotes openness and embraces diversity of ideas and approaches for processing information.

• Self-Renewing. A Powerhouse Partner approaches the marketplace with an abundance mentality and fosters the organization changes needed to keep pace with the marketplace.

• Self-Reinforcing. A Powerhouse Partner understands how to leverage connectedness and appreciates the value of building the relationship skills needed to forge enduring partnerships internally and externally.

The Partnering Organization As a Self-Directing System

As a self-directing system, a Powerhouse Partner knows how to keep its eye on the ball. It can quickly find its bearings and alter course in response to rapid changes in technology, resources, marketplaces, and relationships. Self-direction flows out of grounded, compelling purpose, a driver that results in a spirited workforce that delivers needed and wanted products and services and provides enthusiastic sales and service. The countervailing inhibitor to self-direction is aimlessness, a characteristic that results in a disheartened workforce that delivers unneeded and unwanted products and services and provides lackluster sales and service. In Chapter 3, we emphasized that two powerful forces, ethereal energy and material output, drive organizations, and we presented the Holistic Organization Model as a systematic approach for grasping the interconnected aspects of business strategies and as a mechanism for facilitating alignment across a company.

The partnering infrastructure component that plays the largest role in enabling a Powerhouse Partner to be self-directing is the strategic framework (see Chapter 5), for it interconnects the ethereal energies with the material outputs, creating an ongoing, interactive system. A strategic framework starts with a vision statement that describes the desired destiny of the organization—not a point on a timeline, but rather a navigational reference point guiding the business for the long haul. A mission statement describes how an organization will achieve its vision. Strategic directions specify a broad area of organizational focus, things the company needs to do over the next two to three years to achieve its mission.

Human energy is the most powerful energy in any organization. It is an individual's vision, values, passion, and commitment that propel an organization to achieve great things. A leader's most important role is motivating, harnessing, and directing human energy to achieve the objectives of the organization. Leaders must be skilled in leading people by understanding their intrinsic motivators and connecting with their core values. Leaders thereby create the conditions and environment for people to achieve the objectives of the business.

We also discussed in Chapter 4 how creating a Powerhouse Partner requires focused leadership to establish trust and open communication, listen to others' needs, and act on those needs. In the interconnected world of the twenty-first century, organizations can no longer risk alienating either employees or customers by failing to connect with human values. Instead, they must balance the need to accomplish tasks while connecting with people's values, emotions, and desires, their human energy. To accomplish this connection, the first step is to have leaders who create an environment that is open and receptive to partnering with others. Strong leaders build healthy cultures. Cultures by design are deliberate in their development, and this endeavor is where the role of a leader becomes critical. The characteristics outlined in Chapter 4 describe the ideal leader. People look at what leaders do rather than at what they say. They have learned to filter through the rhetoric that passes as the truth to decipher its hidden, convoluted meanings. When people see a contradiction between message and behavior, they tend to dismiss the individual and the message as phony, perhaps hypocritical.

The Partnering Organization As a Self-Learning System

As a self-learning system, a Powerhouse Partner promotes openness and embraces diversity of ideas and approaches for processing information. It rapidly sees and understands changes in technology, marketplaces, and relationships. Self-learning is rooted in openness, a driver that results in a savvy workforce that delivers up-to-date products and services and provides knowledgeable sales and service. The most dangerous inhibitor to self-learning is protectionism, a trait that produces a disoriented workforce that delivers out-of-date products and services and provides uninformed sales and service. Leaders must value openness and practice it among themselves. The executive team must purposefully decide they are going to behave in an open and trusting manner and commit to using the relationship skills of the Six Partnering Attributes. Leaders must hold each other accountable to practice the behaviors to which they have agreed.

The partnering infrastructure component that most directly enables a Powerhouse Partner to be self-learning is the partnering network (see Chapter 5). Traditional, hierarchical organization designs institutionalize roadblocks to the flow of information and to the formation of connections, impediments that come as no surprise in that hierarchy functions principally as an instrument of centralized control and risk avoidance. We pointed out that a partnering network is a structure that formally connects an organization's members based on the partnerships and the partnering results most fundamental to implementing the enterprise's strategic framework. Time and distance are heartless, relentless adversaries. A company that aspires to prosper as a Powerhouse Partner has to configure itself so that the members of its most critical partnerships can connect with each other, almost without thinking, as often as they need to. Once again, organizations do not partner; people partner. A partnering network establishes an open platform for instituting and using the marketplaces and building and using the pathways necessary for rapid, repeatable, direct human interconnections.

In Chapter 8 we stressed that the two partnering attributes that form the foundation for organizational openness and self-learning are Self-Disclosure and Feedback and Ability to Trust. Words and actions bond together and result in trust. When we say we are going to do something, and then do it, we build trust. If we don't do it, we damage trust. Mastering the art of self-disclosure and feedback is critical to business success. In a business culture, as in life, information flows freely when we feel comfortable and trust those with whom we are communicating. The free flow of information within a business can give a company a powerful competitive edge. But employees will share knowledge and ideas only if leaders have created an internal culture that allows them, in fact encourages them, to do so. If we are uncomfortable and do not trust others, we typically hold information close to the vest and tend not to share as much. The JoHari Window (see Chapter 8) demonstrates how improving the ability to self-disclose and provide feedback can help us explore the unknown, seeing opportunities no one else has seen and improving the bottom line by leveraging these opportunities. Ensuring a free flow of information within an organization requires a systems approach. You can't work on only one problem area—improving employee feedback, for example—without also working on others, such as building trust and developing comfort with change. Information will stop flowing unless all areas of the system are addressed.

Many executives give lip service to the importance of trust but fail to see a direct connection between their own behavior and the amount of trust people have in their organization. The inability of corporate executives to build trust has a more far-reaching impact than just its effect on their immediate employees. This mistrust of business leaders translates directly to investor reluctance, which then denies businesses access to the capital they need to grow, which then hurts their employees and the overall economy. A direct correlation exists between how employees view their company and how customers and stockholders view it. Once leaders have lost the confidence of employees, that negative energy has a measurable impact on the messages employees—and especially frontline employees—deliver to customers, the community at large, and stockholders. You can measure trust just like you measure product quality or customer service excellence. When used properly, a trust indicator can let you know in advance if something is weakening trust in your business. This tracking of trust is a small investment in maintaining morale, keeping information lines open, and maintaining your good reputation in the marketplace. When building a partnering culture, leaders must start with a foundation for openness.

The Partnering Organization As a Self-Renewing System

As a self-renewing system, a Powerhouse Partner approaches the marketplace with an abundance mentality and fosters the organization changes needed to keep pace with the marketplace. A partnering organization swiftly adapts products and services to leverage changes in technology, marketplaces, and relationships. An organization has little chance of being self-renewing without an abundance mentality, a driver that results in an imaginative workforce that delivers innovative products and services and provides problem-focused sales and service. More common in organizations is a scarcity mentality, an inhibitor that results in a stale workforce that delivers boring products and services and provides product-focused sales and service. A Powerhouse Partner focuses on its vision for the future and sets expectations for employees with that vision in mind. It also requires leaders to be open and accepting of new ideas. A hallmark of effective leadership is the ability to introduce required change in the organization. The industrial economy was based on the concept of scarcity and the conservation of material goods, resources of both the material and human varieties. Information becomes more valuable as it becomes abundant, and as it spreads, it can morph into something new. Both information and connections appreciate as organization assets.

The partnering infrastructure component that most directly enables a Powerhouse Partner to be self-renewing is the hiring of people with partnering competencies. People build an organization's culture through what they believe and what they value and how they treat each other, partners, and customers. To build a Powerhouse Partner, the leaders of a company must know what kinds of behaviors expedite and propel human connections and, by extension, which competencies drive partnering behaviors. In the twenty-first century, smart partnering is emerging as one of the preeminent competencies needed for outstanding job performance, and hiring people with partnering competencies will accelerate the building of a Powerhouse Partner. In Chapter 6 we outlined a suite of six partnering competencies with sample behavioral indicators; offered the Partnering Interview as an innovative, empirical approach for determining the breadth and depth of a job candidate's partnering competencies; and provided a Partnering Interview Plan with sample questions as a protocol for conducting team Partnering Interviews. Partnering with colleagues to conduct a Partnering Interview has a substantive advantage over conducting only one-on-one behavioral interviews.

In Chapter 9 we underscored that the two partnering attributes driving a Powerhouse Partner to move to the future with creativity and remain self-renewing are Future Orientation and Comfort with Change. Living in the future is one of the most difficult behavior changes leaders must undergo if they are to rewire their business cultures for the Dual Age of Information and Connections. Having a past orientation—especially within the ranks of leaders—is one reason that organizations have difficulty innovating. As a leader, when you speak about the future in terms that betray a past orientation, you're giving people conflicting messages. To make the transition from a past to a future orientation, those who are resistant to change must learn to be comfortable doing things differently, to challenge their belief system, and to plan for the future. When using future-oriented language, you must be careful to differentiate the person from the outcome of the past activity (see Chapter 9). Continuing to focus on errors and not trying to remove obstacles to success is a hallmark of a past orientation. You can start the reorientation of your culture by changing your language.

All change is personal, especially when it is happening to you. The potential for a change event to damage trust and create win-lose situations is high. Partnering cultures follow four simple steps to ensure that when the change event is completed, people still trust leaders and feel like everyone has won:

• Get clear on the case for change

• Align the change with the strategic framework

• Integrate the change into the organization structure

• Communicate, communicate, communicate

Leaders need to be clear about the nature of the change event occurring. Trying to implement change that is inconsistent with the values and strategic direction of an organization can be devastating. When planning for a change event, be sure that you enlist representatives from each department or team in the business, share the planned upcoming change, and talk about the impact the change will have on each group. Put together teams of people to develop win-win outcomes and plans to mitigate any destructive backlash or sabotage that may appear. Leaders must organize formal and informal communication pathways and connections focused solely on the change event. The more two-way dialogues between leaders and employees, the higher the likelihood of a successful change. Powerhouse Partners know that during a time of transition, the key to success is letting go of fear.

The Partnering Organization As a Self-Reinforcing System

As a self-reinforcing system, a Powerhouse Partner understands how to leverage connectedness and appreciates the value of building the relationship skills needed to forge enduring partnerships internally and externally. Smart partners quickly make the personal and business connections required to deploy new products and services and thus enable their enterprise to profit from changes in technology, marketplaces, and relationships. An organization becomes self-reinforcing principally through connectedness, a driver that results in a collaborative workforce that delivers high-quality products and services and provides personalized sales and service. The organization characteristic that will undermine self-reinforcement most severely is isolation, an inhibitor that results in a combative workforce that delivers mediocre products and services and provides patronizing sales and service. People working for a Powerhouse Partner know how to manage their emotions, defer self-gratification for the good of others, and negotiate successful outcomes. Leaders are willing to rely on others for success. Organizations and the level of information needed to operate them are far too complex for any one individual to act in isolation. Leaders know how to delegate and hold others accountable for results.

The partnering infrastructure component that most directly enables a Powerhouse Partner to be self-reinforcing is keeping and growing smart partners (see Chapter 7). People add value whether by serving customers, building or selling products, or running the business. In the emerging information and connection economy, interpersonal relationships act as transmission conduits, as connectors. When employees are treated as trusted partners in an enterprise, they are freed up to pool their collective creative energies for the benefit of the business as a whole. More connections produce more good ideas; more good ideas result in more great ideas; and more great ideas deliver extraordinary innovation. Smart partners drive creativity by increasing the frequency, frankness, and fruitfulness of interpersonal connections, dialogue, and collaboration. Leaders who want to build a Powerhouse Partner must proactively learn, apply, and refine a robust set of partnering skills, and they must ensure that employees build the relationship skills needed to execute against the company's strategic framework.

In Chapter 7 we made three suggestions for how an organization's leaders can keep and grow smart partners:

• Build loyalty and a sense of duty

• Coach people to grow informal communication networks (pathways)

• Strengthen relationship skills: the diversity of management skills of leaders and the partnering skills of employees

If you invest energy in employees' loyalty, they in turn will provide added value. If you do not invest in employees, ignore them, or abuse them, the opposite will occur. Establishing a coaching and mentoring program to accelerate the cultivation of informal communication networks is an important step in creating a Powerhouse Partner. The particular kind of diversity that twenty-first-century leaders must be able to manage is the diversity of ideas and opinions and how people express those ideas. People in different parts of an enterprise are likely to need different kinds of relationship skills. Neither an organization's leaders nor its employees will acquire them by osmosis, by accident, or by divine intervention. These relationship skills must be built by design.

In Chapter 10 we underscored that the two partnering attributes driving a Powerhouse Partner to embrace connectivity for agility and remain self-reinforcing are Win-Win Orientation and Comfort with Interdependence. Partnering is an unnatural act for most of us—the relationship skills required for being a great partner and building a partnering culture are often counterintuitive. Businesses that have invested in learning smart partnering skills and in creating a partnering culture have the relationship skills needed to weather major marketplace changes without fear. Having a culture that is grounded in trust, able to communicate, and focused on the future will give your enterprise a competitive advantage. A fundamental correlation exists between satisfied employees and satisfied customers. The key to any leader's success is striking a balance between getting results and satisfying employees' needs. Use a win-win orientation and you may be surprised to discover that a conflict between achieving results and building a loyal workforce is not inevitable. The only conflict resolution style that is designed for producing a win-win outcome is the Negotiator style. The process is time consuming, but the alternative, creating losers on your team, will ultimately cause you to waste more time and resources than spending the energy up front and resolving the issue.

To survive in the interconnected world of the twenty-first century, you have to make sure that you succeed and that your partners and colleagues succeed. Your ability to be comfortable with such a high level of interdependence depends on your capacity to master the Six Partnering Attributes, since each links with the others to form a partnering culture. In the Dual Age of Information and Connections, businesses cannot afford to waste any human resource. Interdependence must be a part of the culture and embedded in every action we take.

Be a Powerhouse Partner

In the Dual Age of Information and Connections, task achievement alone will no longer propel an organization—or its stock valuation—to where its stakeholders demand that it go. Creating the innovation, business relationships, and value needed to move a company to the next level requires a focused effort on harnessing and releasing human potential and creativity. In most organizations, the worse things get operationally or financially, the more people tend to hunker down and just do things. Building relationships, communicating needs, and doing it right the first time result in less rework and higher-quality output, faster and cheaper. Smart partners know that sharing information is the currency of success and that building a collaborative culture to enable that to happen is the next logical step.

To accomplish this goal, an organization needs to have in place a process that enables everyone to slow down under stress and be guided by leaders grounded in the personal mastery of being smart partners. Ideally, the organization infrastructure includes a grounded, compelling strategic framework, aligned strategies and tactics, agreements on priorities and allocation of resources, the right people with the right skills in the right jobs, and reward and compensation systems that drive the right behaviors. An organization must have a plan in place to help its people continue to hone their partnering skills, with the goal of making them smarter partners.

The first step in building a partnering culture needs to be taken by an organization's executive leaders. Leaders must move beyond intellectually understanding partnering behaviors into living partnering behaviors everyday. The Six Partnering Attributes create a language that enables team members to communicate better with each other about which behaviors are productive and which are counter-productive.

The second step in creating a partnering culture is ensuring that the organization's infrastructure supports a collaborative culture. People will do what they are paid to do, not what leaders preach that they expect them to do. If you want collaborative behavior, you must balance the reward for both collaborative behavior and individual contribution.

Once leaders have attained personal mastery using the Six Partnering Attributes, and once organization structures and processes have been put into place to support the use of these attributes, employees must be trained in their use to accomplish their work tasks. This continuous strengthening of partnering skills creates a self-reinforcing network and embeds the partnering language and behaviors deeper and deeper within the organization.

Creating a Powerhouse Partner using the Powerhouse Partner Model requires that you invest time, money, and energy in both achieving tasks and in building relationships. This task-relationship balance constitutes a central partnering force that must always be in the forefront of a leader's mind. The act of transforming an organization culture, a paradox in itself, is messy and complex and requires leaders to exemplify their strongest relationship abilities. Leaders must push the boundaries of patience with people. Unfortunately for many businesses, it's at this point that every instinct signals people to hunker down and get back to task at the expense of the relationship. Ethereal energies result directly from a leader's ability to create an organizational environment that supports and encourages human achievement. Material output directly reflects the ethereal energy within an organization. Although the short-term effect of an imbalance between achieving tasks and building relationships may seem insignificant to leaders, the long-term impact on a business can be deadly.

Day by day, leaders must demonstrate the partnering behaviors needed to create cultures that thrive on open, positive communication and win-win problem-solving and conflict resolution strategies—cultures that are future focused, adaptable, and interdependent. The kind of organization culture that made the developed world an industrial powerhouse over the past half-century will not sustain businesses in the next economic age. In the Dual Age of Information and Connections, businesses operate on fundamentally different principles from those of the Industrial Age. Imagine harnessing the brilliance of the workforce. Imagine learning from each other. Imagine being an innovation factory, turning out new and exciting ideas and concepts on a regular basis. Imagine having a workforce that is not just loyal, but feels a sense of duty to the success of the organization. These aspirations are not just the compilations of an executive wish list. They are the goals that must be reached to become a Powerhouse Partner in the Dual Age of Information and Connections.