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Building High-Performance Business Relationships
Achieving sustainable performance on large-scale programs and projects requires that both existing and potential partners establish proactive, flexible, and collaborative relationships. The KPMG-SRS Centre for Strategic Relationships and Contract Management is pleased to offer: An Executive seminar on Relationship Management, Relational Contracting, and Collaborative Working in Ottawa on October 24-26 at the KPMG Offices located…Read…
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The Defense spending problem and the need for finding the balance between contractual imperatives and relational execution
Whether in recent headlines or within the confines of inner circle discussions talking about Defense procurement and the challenges the Canadian government has been facing in getting it right is a hot topic. A series of recent articles including one by the CBC titled “After years of missteps, Canadian Military officials hope procurement now on…Read…
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ISO 44001: Creating The “New” Standard For Business Relationships
Over the past few months there has been, with increasing frequency, the publication of many articles written on the emergence or re-emergence of the relational approach to complex business relationships. Whether it is a true renaissance or not, remains to be seen. After all, the importance of relationships in business, and for that matter, in…Read…
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Getting Beyond Crisis Triggers As the Foundation For Successful Relationships
Do not get me wrong, there are of course steps that can and must be taken to evolve the relationship between stakeholders, from the concept stage through to the execution and outcome stage. One example is the Staircase of Relationships presented by Malcolm Morley in his June 9th, 2016 blog post of the same name.…Read…
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Why scrap shipbuilding strategy? Improved outcomes starts with open communications and transparency
“That project was awarded to the Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyard. The briefing assigned no blame but suggested there were improvements the B.C.-based shipbuilder could make . . . “Vancouver Shipyards needed to find skilled staff, establish capability to increase design work and learn how to use new facilities,” the briefing material said.” – CBC News, November…Read…
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Understanding The (New) Role of Relationships In Achieving Business Success
A recent international conference brought together senior buying executives, vendors and lawyers from around the world, to discuss solutions to the high rate of initiative failures. According to one study, more than 70% of all business arrangements fail to deliver the expected results. What were the two key conclusions that came out of the conference…Read…
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How To Avoid The Tombstone Effect In Business Relationships by Andy Akrouche
Welcome To Tombstone Whenever there is instability and divisiveness in the buyer-side internal relationship framework, this dysfunction is ultimately extended to include external stakeholders such as vendors. Think of it as the wild west town of Tombstone and the famous battle at the OK Corral. What would it have felt like for an outsider to…Read…
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Can you commission success? by Andy Akrouche
“The act of granting certain powers or the authority to carry out a particular task or duty.” – definition of commissioning There is – at least in the world of complex project contracting and management, a fine line between the delegation of a project’s lead to a more experienced third-party, and the abdication of responsibility for its success. With the former, the buyer is looking to leverage the expertise of a…Read…
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The Truth About Public-Private Partnerships
“The fact is that the majority of all long-term complex business arrangements underperform or fail because they are structured as a deal or a transaction as opposed to a strategic relationship between key stakeholders. Whatever name you give it, a transaction or a deal is still a deal.” – The (Real) Art of the Deal…Read…
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Turning Good Relationships Into Great Relationships by Andy Akrouche
“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is…Read…
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While familiarity purportedly breeds contempt, it certainly doesn’t lead to procurement fraud
I read with great interest Colin Cram’s recent post regarding both the prevalence and significant impact that fraud within the procurement process has beyond the original transaction itself. While the Cram article focuses on how fraud and corruption are badly damaging the economies of many African countries, there is no doubt that its overall effect…Read…
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The Myth Surrounding Executive Buy-In
I recently came across an article in IndustryWeek titled The Politics of Improvement: The Challenge of Getting Company Leaders’ Buy-In. While there are obviously certain degrees of politics in every facet of everyday living – I have never been a fan of the term “buy-in”. In fact I have a strong distaste for its implications,…Read…
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Strategic Sourcing And The Road To Transformational Leadership
In his recent post titled Who Are Procurement’s New Leaders, Jon Hansen referenced a reader comment that “business strategy and traditional procurement strategy are often misaligned.” As a result, “necessary leadership talent must synthesize the best . . . and discard the obsolete to create something new.” In my experience the “new” to which the…Read…
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Why 2015 is the year of the Relationships Management Officer
I recently listened to an interview involving Pete Wharton, IBM’s Commerce Solutions Product Marketing Leader. During the segment, Wharton indicated that IBM’s plan was to “create an ecosystem of technology partners to extend IBM’s service capabilities to its customers.” The interviewer then made the statement that it sounded as if IBM was “trying to corner…Read…
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Achieving certainty: How to create a culture for collaboration by Andy Akrouche
The sole purpose for creating a contract is to establish a path of certainty that will guarantee a successful outcome. In short, if I do “A” and you do “B” we should achieve “C”. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as absolute certainty in the real world. As a result, even a well crafted contract…Read…
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Converting knowledge into sustainable action by Andy Akrouche
I recently came across an interesting article which talked about the fact that businesses spend far more time and money on training programs that do not ultimately “deliver, develop or demonstrate long-term results.” The article then went on to say that “to make new behaviors sustaining,” you have to “translate knowledge into committed action.” In…Read…
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How Do You Source A High Performing Business Relationship? by Andy Akrouche
Now that we have in my previous post, identified what a high performance relationship actually is, the next question is how do you find one? Or perhaps the better word would be “establish” one? “The contract must become a platform to manage inevitable change, not pursue certainty based on the original deal.” – Ian Mack. Director…Read…
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What Is A High Performing Business Relationship? by Andy Akrouche
In my previous post Are You Ready To Become Relational, I talked about the need to move beyond the semantical definition of a business relationship to a state of relational readiness. Specifically, positioning your organization to look outside of the narrowly defined and largely ineffective performance-based contracting model, to an adaptive relational framework that is…Read…
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Are You Ready To Become Relational by Andy Akrouche
Over the past couple of years there has been a notable shift in the area of complex business arrangements including outsourcing, public-public and public-private partnerships centered around the importance of relationships. Specifically the recognition that effectively managing the “relationship” between all stakeholders is the single most critical element of a successful initiative. Even industry associations…Read…
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Performance-based contracting and the road less traveled by Andy Akrouche
According to a World Bank report titled Performance-Based Contracting for Health Services in Developing Countries: A Toolkit, performance-based contracting is a type of contracting with; a clear set of objectives and indicators, systematic efforts to collect data on the progress of the selected indicators, and consequences, either rewards or sanctions for the contractor, that are…