I thought I'd follow up my earlier post today with a real case example of what I meant...
Earlier this week, a manager from our corporate unit came to talk to my boss about getting our help in providing her some inputs on our past collaboration with this one multinational company. Without going into much details, my company happened to award contracts to international companies and as the unit responsible for strategy formulation of our domestic operations, we have done a few "partnership" studies to assess the level of collaboration between us and our international partners.
So this manager from our corporate unit called us for a discussion where she shared with us the draft of her study, which left me completely floored... not because I was impressed, but because I was immediately "turned-off" by her cluttered slides.
A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to work with one of the most strategically minded bosses in my company and I still remember his simple philosophy when it comes to pitching ideas - he only has 2 rules.
Rule No. 1 - The flow of your presentation reflects your thought process
Rule No. 2 - The quality of your slides reflects the clarity of your thinking
Needless to say, this manager has neither clear thought process nor any clue how to approach her problem...
Nevertheless, my boss let her take us through her analysis and she tried to argue that we had given so many contracts for local project to this particular company and yet internationally they have not really brought us into any long lasting and meaningful partnership. And then she went on to compare the multinational companies collaboration with a Chinese companies where they have forged a mutually benefitial relationship. So, according to her, it was her tasks to unlock the right "code" for us to replication from this multinational-chinese company relationship and emulate it to unlock our international growth...
By the end of her cluttered, busy and dizzying presentation, I was completedly checked-out...
Often times I observed middle management squabble over misinterpreted direction. I personally believe that the corporate manager (bless her ignorance) was trying to gether input to help her analysis but when she pitched her study in a messy presentation, with half-cooked ideas, she sent the wrong message - her presentation was more about how we had given too many contracts domestically and failed to cultivate valueable partnership internationally. I appreciate that she tried to coin the term "code of collaboration" but it essentially is just a way to collaborate... why corporate people like to coin terms that's so complicated is beyond my understanding...
OK, so what did I do?
The main issue was not about the deals that we had made or failed to make. The main point of the study was to understand what is the best way for us to collaborate with this multinational company. If this company can successfully forged a symbiotic partnership with a Chinese company, what's stopping us? So with this new focus, I redrafted the strategy paper.
First, I proposed we look at how the international company started in Malaysia, then we assess their areas of operations, their collaboration with my company, their market share and the trend of their investment. It's important to see past trend in these key indicators before you can chart how to effectively collaborate in the future.
Another thing, it is also worth to go back in time and study the strategies and reasons that we awarded a lot of contracts to this company. Comparing number of contracts awarded to them against successful international ventures that they had brought us in is grossly inappropriate. Business is not driven by number of contracts but rather value of these contracts. Say we had awarded 10 contracts to them and in return we managed to grow our revenue 10x whilst they only took us in 1 international deal, it doesn't automatically mean that we got the short end of the stick! That's why I think in analysing the impact of collaboration and partnership, it is important to take into consideration not only the direct value of the contract but also the spin-off values created from such collaboration. Values derived from capability development, technology deployment for example.
Then we should study their strategic blueprint in Malaysia and assess it against our company strategies. Are there overlapped areas of focus that we can enter together as partners? Are we competing to win the same market? Do we have capabilities that can compliment each other's strategies? How about our proprietary technology?
Next step is to know what focus areas in the international market that we want to strategically grow and do we need this company to grow into this area? Are we entering into a new region/country and are they present in that region/country? Only by knowing what we want to pursue internationally and how we plan to grow in these areas can we identify areas of collaboration.
After that then we can study their behaviour in collaborating with their international partners. What kind of value propositions do they look for in their partners? Can we offer superior values? Identifying these strategic enablers are critical to ensure that we have the leverage for negotiation. Now, go back to their operation in Malaysia; understanding their growth areas can give you leverage to structure any effective asset swap - one way to successfully collaborate with them. After all, a successful collaboration entails a mutually benefitial cooperation!
Voila - that's your "code" for effective collaboration!
Sometimes, I think this thing is a matter of logic and common sense but a few months in a unit that's a bit closer to corporate taught me that not everybody shares the same logical sense with you...
So tomorrow she asked me to join her discussion with her boss... that should be interesting!
