Partnerships of Excellence – Not Just For Business Anymore

by | Jun 19, 2020 | Business, Growth, Personal, Relationships

I am an only child. I am a solopreneur, I do a lot of my work alone. Well, sort of.  You see, I have built Partnerships of Excellence to help me out.

What Are Partnerships of Excellence

What are these Partnerships of Excellence and how do they work? I define PE’s as relationships where others who do what I cannot do well out of natural ability and love of the task working with me in a relationship for mutual gain.

Loosely translated that means I find people who love doing the things I’m less than effective doing, create a relationship with them and entering into a partnership where my skills help them and theirs help me.

Anyone who has ever worked in a flexible environment knows about this – you have those people who are amazing at writing and do it as effortlessly as breathing. The writers can’t balance their checkbooks to save their lives. They could go in search of people who love balancing checkbooks and don’t give it a second glance since it’s so easy for them, but can’t write a sentence that makes sense.

These two hook up to create a Partnership of Excellence and both win — the writer writes  while the checkbook balancer balances checkbooks.  Both are happy and both are much more effective because they’re doing what they love and what is natural for them instead of agonizing and pushing to complete tasks they hate and which take twice as long because they’re so repugnant. This is a simplistic example. But I think you get the idea.

Relationships Benefit, Too

Think of this in a relationship – if you are the one in the couple who loves to cook, you record hours of The Food Network for your day off, and write up menus in your sleep, then you do that part. If, on the other hand, you are the one in the relationship who can’t boil water without burning it, but you’re a compulsive neatnik. Your significant other is a whiz at preparing tasty meals but can’t pick up after themselves to save their lives.  You let them do the cooking and you clean.

Partnerships of Excellence Work

In business, these are critical. You cannot and should not be expected to do everything well; why waste your time doing what frustrates you and stresses you out? Don’t you have tasks you just HATE to do? Of course you do. Finding others who enjoy doing those same nasty tasks and offering to do the things they hate to do, providing you’re better at them,  is just good sense.  All it takes is a conversation to find out where assistance is needed. I was an administrative assistant for over 30 years. I detested filing (and still do). I had a co-worker who loved the orderliness and organization of a well maintained cabinet. He did our filing and I did his transcription. Worked out perfectly.

So take inventory of what needs to be done,  look around at the next networking event you attend and see if there is someone there who needs what you do well and does what you don’t. Easy breezy.

One caution – this has to be a PARTNERSHIP, the pendulum has to be perpendicular for it to work. Ethics and fairness must play a factor.

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