Effective Partnerships

Building on our experience in the capital goods industry supporting contractors and equity partners complete large and complex initiatives on time and under budget, we have developed an approach for creating effective alliances and partnerships in a number of different contexts: joint ventures, capital projects, overseas and domestic partnerships, long-term operating and maintenance contracts.

In our experience, the focus of most alliances and partnerships of this nature is on establishing first the contractual framework, and then setting out the technical scope of the work to be produced. Insufficient attention is paid to preparing the team for the work ahead in a number of areas:

Aligning the team on a vision and set of values by which everyone will work together, and setting up a process to implement and manage this over time.
Anticipating potential areas of conflict, and developing strategies for dealing effectively with them when they might arise
Equipping the team members with core skills in communication and conflict resolution
Establishing a no blame culture, with a commitment and procedures for resaolving challenges and breakdowns in the process
Enabling team members to deal effectively with circumstances that appear to be outside the control of the project.

The Values Partnership's approach is designed to prepare the team to meet these challenges.