If I'm not mistaken, the song 'It takes two to tango' was recorded on vinyl by Louis Armstrong sometime in the early 1950s. YouTube agrees with that, by the way. Now I am not from that era (I am a little bit younger), but the song- expression came to my mind when I realized how important it is to have good business partners who help you continuously exceed the expectations of your customers. Well, it is really not always that easy to make the right choices. How do you ensure you pick the right partners ?
The beginning
In my opinion, everything starts at the beginning. That seems logical and it should be. However, in my business environment I notice that this principle is not always applied in practice. Do we need an ICT partner? Then we dig into our network, find one or more, ask the relevant people to have a chat, we do some background and/or compliance checks and then award the assignment to the selected party. Recognizable? Probably. And also very 'social' to award someone from your own network the business. After all, we know each other and we have to help each other, right?
Need assessment
I will certainly not challenge the above. I am even a firm believer in doing business with trusted partners based on personal or recent customer experiences. However, I want to go back to the real beginning and that is not the conclusion that we need an ICT partner. The beginning is that we have a certain need for ( data ) communication- ICT functionality. To ensure that we have the right partner in house, we must first clearly formulate what exactly this need consists of. When we want ICT, we get ICT. But maybe we will get more (or less) than we need. It is therefore important to first determine what we actually need. And that brings me to another statement that has often served me.
"Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers."
The quote is from Tony Robbins; author, speaker and life coach of various world leaders such as Michail Gorbatsjov, Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton. With his statement, he underlines that you have a better chance of success if you ask the right questions. So you will have to consult yourself before asking someone else for an answer. Freely translated: formulate your need in such a way that you have the best chance of a service or product that seamlessly matches your wishes. And don't think that you can always do that best as a director or manager. Let the employees of your organization participate in formulating the true need. By actively involving them in the right question, you also increase their support for the chosen solution.
Understanding and collaboration
Once the need has been unambiguously determined, it becomes a lot easier to find a partner who can deliver the solution you have been looking for. Of course you may first go to your trusted relationships and the goodwill factor will undoubtedly also play a role. Most importantly, you are giving them the opportunity to really add value. You will notice that a well thought-out detailed question leads to proposals that make sense and are stripped of unnecessary frills. In fact, you show that you are willing to delve into the needs of your partners for them to be able to give you an answer that works for you. The opposite is also true, of course. It is equally important for us as our clients' business partner to help them ask the right questions. After all, this ensures more mutual understanding and a higher quality of cooperation. It really takes two to tango.
How this works for CANI
CANI has an extensive network of specialists on all major disciplines of business.
They have been selected based on skills, knowledge, business empathy and (other) leadership skills. During our intake, we will first do a needs-assessment to help our clients formulate that essential primary question. We will always look for the right solution and where we use business partners, we ensure they fully understand the primary question of our customer and the chosen approach.
CANI: keep growing.
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