Weaknesses
I spent a week in aggressive business development and partnering discussions.Â
Each meeting was eerily similar, yet different.Â
Similar in content and tone.Â
Different in expectations and outcomes.
Filled with facts, figures, examples, and references for areas of great strength.
One thing never talked about yet vitally important to all of the discussions was weakness.Â
Partnering should strengthen a solution and compensate for weakness in one or both of those in the partnership.Â
But no one ever said, “We’re weak in this area and trying to shore it up”.Â
More importantly, no one said, “We have a glaring weakness in our company, and we want you to know about it as we talk about our partnership”.
Can you trust if you don’t openly talk about weaknesses?
We talked trust in every meeting.
We agreed trust was key to the success of any partnership.
We said trust could be reached if we transitioned from talk to action.
Yet we didn’t talk weaknesses.
May be time to reopen the partnering discussions.
And focus on weaknesses.