INTRODUCING THE POWERHOUSE PARTNER MODEL

In the Dual Age of Information and Connections, creating the value and innovation needed to move an organization to the next level requires a focused effort on harnessing and releasing human potential and creativity. But how? Chapter 3 presents the Powerhouse Partner Model, a blueprint for building a partnering powerhouse, comprising three components:

• Practicing focused leadership

• Building a partnering infrastructure

• Developing smart partners

These three inputs combine to create a partnering culture, the foundation of a partnering organization. Strong leaders build healthy cultures. In practicing focused leadership, leaders start with themselves, purposefully committing to behave in an open and trusting manner by using the interpersonal skills described in the Six Partnering Attributes. The second step in creating a partnering culture is to be sure the organization's infrastructure supports a collaborative culture. The third step is to strengthen partnering behaviors in the organization, creating a self-reinforcing network and embedding partnering language and behaviors deeper and deeper within the organization.

Organization culture changes one person at a time. Leaders have a critical role in the process, and it starts with having an accurate assessment of one's own capabilities. Chapter 4 explores the components of personal mastery in using the Six Partnering Attributes, inspiring vision and motivating others to achieve more than the mundane.

If partnering is emerging as an essential business strategy for the Dual Age of Information and Connections, what are the implications of embracing a partnering philosophy on the structure of an organization? To help answer that question, Chapter 5 gets into the nuts and bolts of job and organization design. The chapter introduces the job design concepts of a Partnering Profile and a Partnering Summary and the organization design model of a partnering network that is focused and aligned to achieve the enterprise's strategic framework: its vision, mission, and strategic directions. Partnering creates value; people partner; build your organization for partnering; pay for partnering. Partnering creates value, and it's people who partner. Therefore, you must construct an organization to enable partnering to happen and reward people for partnering. In sum, the chapter provides practical ideas for how to institutionalize partnering in the Dual Age of Information and Connections.

But what does a smart partner look like? Chapter 6 recommends that companies rethink the competencies they view as core to their organization's culture and success. Partnering-enabling competencies must form the foundation for an organization's human performance system in the Dual Age of Information and Connections. Also introduced in this chapter is the concept of a Partnering Interview, a proprietary, innovative approach for determining the breadth and depth of a job candidate's partnering competencies. A Partnering Interview Plan is a tool that interviewers can use to note critical questions to ask and to ensure that interviewers probe all relevant partnering competencies.

Smart partners drive creativity by increasing the frequency, frankness, and fruitfulness of interpersonal connections, dialogue, and collaboration. Chapter 7 proposes three concrete action steps an organization's leaders can take to keep and grow smart partners in the twenty-first century: build loyalty and a sense of duty; coach people to grow informal communication networks (pathways); and strengthen relationship skills. Relationship skills are required both for leaders, to manage a new kind of diversity—one of opinions and ideas and approaches to processing information—and for employees, to enable them not only to tolerate such diversity of perspectives, but also to cherish it as the fuel of creativity.

The foundation of a culture is how people communicate with each other and whether they believe the communication will be followed up with actions consistent with the communication. When people do not trust each other, they typically hold information close to the vest. Chapter 8 tackles reinforcing the foundation for the organizational openness required for people to trust each other and to share information. A partnering culture encourages self-disclosure and feedback. Without accurate information about a trading partner's needs and wants, the success of any marketplace exchange falls largely to chance. Smart partnering helps you see what is happening in the marketplace with a fresh perspective. Trust forms the foundation of a work climate in which people know and appreciate the limits of reliability and can be sure that these borders will be respected. Only one experience of betrayal will threaten even the best-crafted partnership.

Businesses today are facing a colossal transformation in the marketplace. One key to making the kinds of cultural adaptations needed to survive, even thrive, in the twenty-first century is linked to a leader's capacity not only to think about the future, but also to live in the future. Chapter 9 addresses moving to the future with creativity. In a partnering culture, creativity comes about most directly from having a future orientation and being comfortable with change. Bonded together, they form a sturdy platform for creativity and innovation. If a business has a past orientation, it tends to impose past experience on new situations. With a future orientation, it is more likely to see the possibilities in new situations and approach them with hope and good faith. Finding a level of comfort with change enables an organization to identify obstacles to change, develop strategies for coping with them, and formulate action plans for implementing desired business changes.

In the Dual Age of Information and Connections, businesses by necessity must reach out, form new business relationships, profit from them, and move on quickly. Businesses must propagate connections. Chapter 10 explores embracing connectivity for agility. In a partnering culture, a win-win orientation forms the bedrock of marketplaces. Interconnections among marketplaces give an organization ready access to competencies and resources it does not possess in-house. Links build agility. Interdependence in particular enables continuity and vibrancy in marketplaces. Interdependence is an active, ongoing process that requires all parties to move apace from initial independence to vibrant collaboration. It serves as the foundation of the marketplace component of organization culture. Forget about getting a bigger slice of the pie—partner to make the pie bigger and sweeter.