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Ann Handley of MarketingProfs has sent us the following in the latest email. It is credited to Aussie Michelle Smith.

10. You lecture the neighborhood kids selling lemonade on ways to improve their look-to-buy ratio.
9. You get all excited when it’s Saturday so you can wear casual clothes to work.
8. You refer to the tomatoes grown in your garden as “deliverables.”
7. You find you really need PowerPoint to explain what you do for a living.
6. You normally eat out of vending machines and at the most expensive restaurant in town within the same week.
5. You wear gray to work, instead of navy blue, to make a bold fashion statement.
4. You know the people at the airport and hotel better than your next-door neighbors.
3. You ask your friends to “think out of the box” when making Friday night plans.
2. You think Einstein would have been more effective had he put his ideas into a matrix.
1. You think a “half-day” means leaving work at 5 o’clock.

Change is constant in today’s business environment. In order to maintain a competitive advantage, companies are forming alliances to complement their product and service strategy, and to offer clients comprehensive, innovative solutions. Magnet has also decided to unleash the opportunities through alliances.

Synergy works! It enables us to share best practices, scale up operations and enable continuous process improvements. Alliance partners can focus on their core competencies. Magnet Alliance Partner (MAP) would focus on marketing efforts by spending more time on analyzing customer’s specific requirements and monitoring the development process. Alliance partnerships are a route to scalable and fast growth by optimizing strengths of alliance partner’s strengths.

Alliances ensure:
– Greater Focus
– Lower Costs
– Speedier Execution
– Effective Organizational Efficiency
– Optimal Results
– Increased Profitability
– Total Peace of Mind

What makes for a successful alliance?

Benjamin Gomes-Casseres has written a article on Successful Alliances based on his consulting experience and on the research for his book, The Alliance Revolution: The New Shape of Business Rivalry (Harvard University Press, 1996).

He says : Tomorrow’s companies will not survive if they try to do everything themselves, nor will they be saved by a strategic alliance here or there. But having a real alliance strategy will give them a fighting chance.

According to him, an alliance strategy creates the context for the success of individual partnerships. Ten factors pertaining to the deal itself are critical:

1. Have a clear strategic purpose. Alliances are never an end in themselves–they ought to be tools in service of a business strategy.

2. Find a fitting partner. This means a partner with compatible goals and complementary capabilities.

3. Specialize. Allocate tasks and responsibilities in the alliances in a way that enables each party to do what does best.

4. Create incentives for cooperation. Working together never happens automatically, particularly not when partners were formerly rivals.

5. Minimize conflicts between partners. The scope of the alliance and of partners’ roles should avoid pitting one against the other in the market.

6. Share information. Continual communication develops trust and also keeps joint projects on target.

7. Exchange personnel. Regardless of the form of the alliance, personal contact and site visits are essential for maintaining communication and trust.

8. Operate with long time horizons. Mutual forbearance in solving short-run conflicts is enhanced by the expectation of future gains.

9. Develop multiple joint projects. Successful cooperation on one project can help partners weather the storm in less successful joint projects.

10. Be flexible. Alliances are open-ended, dynamic relationships that need to evolve in pace with their environment and in pursuit of new opportunities.