Streamlining Partnership Management in a VUCA environment

Very few would argue against the fact that we operate our businesses in highly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environments, or VUCA - a term coined by the United States Army War College to describe the post-Cold War era of the 1980s. In the present-time VUCA world, leaders and managers face constant, unpredictable and dynamic changes, accelerated by technological and geopolitical developments.

We are more connected than ever, and some or a large aspect of our business hinges on understanding and leveraging our partnerships, within the rubric of those developments and challenges. My role within the partnerships sector over the past 20 years spanned transnational education, technology enabled learning and programme management. I developed streamlined, adaptive partnerships models that helped me to leverage opportunities with potential and existing partners.

Below are the key aspects of my partnerships model I documented in early 2024.

Design an effective account management approach

Balance long-, medium- and short-term strategies to align with an account management approach. Think of agility and adaptability that can be build in when building and managing your partnerships network. Prioritise communication and touchpoints, and align and re-align with the organisational strategy.

Partnerships Segmentation and Differentiators

Commit to learning as much as possible about your partners, and develop a model that helps you to segment and classify your partnerships, and visualise it into a Partnerships Grid. This will enable you to apply regional and growth plans and map with products and market insights. It also gives you oversight of changes and adaptations in approach should, for example, a market condition change.

Build and manage an account management team

Leverage experience with fresh ideas. Create a high-performance team and single point of contact for the partnership lifecycle:

Focus: Expertise on the partnership lifecycle, markets and segments that stakeholders trust and can rely on.

Accountability:  Defined roles, responsibilities and SLAs, underpinned by plans for essential travel and team budgets agreed with senior leadership.

Solutions-oriented team culture: A growth and continuous improvement mindset to meet the scale and pace of current needs and new business opportunities, with capabilities to respond to external market and geopolitical developments.

Transparency: Team touchpoints and appraisals, performance management and training.

With the aim to:

• Deliver a proactive and responsive service to partners and to support new business developments.

• Build and nurture internal relationships- new business development, market insights, operations, communications, product teams, etc.

• Link the team’s performance to KPIs.

Measure results and manage performance

Define your KPIs (revenue growth, number of partnerships, partner satisfaction, etc.) and measure them. Use metrics and performance measures.

Quantitative metrics should include recruitment, performance and income KPIs (e.g. 5% p.a. revenue a over 5 year); growth statistics and market insights on competitor performance and product developments.

Qualitative metrics include partner feedback, other stakeholder insights (Senior Leadership, operations teams, etc.), and trends (global consumer behaviours, regulatory and technology developments).

Performance measures assessed through dashboards - KPIs, Governance, Market insights, Management Information.

Track, report and adjust your plans - Communications, Regional and Growth.

A suggested 12-month account management roadmap

In conclusion of my approach to streamlining Partnership Management in a VUCA environment, I am outlining a suggested 12-month account management roadmap. Each quarter, outlines certain steps to ensure that we have a strong foundation to adapt as new insights and developments surface.

The key to remaining agile is to have streamlined, well-informed operating models that are aligned with the organisation's strategy.