Boost Your Outreach by Partnering

Partnering, networking or outreaching is a generally accepted, effective way to boost your visibility in the marketplace or among your peers and stakeholders. It also increases your chances of succeeding.

By reaching out to the world around you, you create relationships that will contribute to your success now and in the future. Relationships are the building blocks for profitable business activities as well as successful civic happenings. Whether you want to organize a multicultural neighborhood volleyball game, get rid of unfair housing practices in your town, mobilize to protect the environment, or create a local business council, you will need to form many solid relationships.

Why? Because the relationships we form with the communities we serve, colleagues in business, our co-workers and staff members, and even our adversaries and competitors are the means for achieving our goals. That is the raison d’etre of trade or industry organizations: like-minded companies getting together to help one another by increasing knowledge and boosting business rather than fixing prices and stifling commerce.

A rising tide lifts all ships – and a combined effort benefits near and distant participants. When more people put their shoulders to the wheel, the task becomes easier.

People and businesses don't work in isolation: we need to be working together. Our combined relationships form the foundation of an organized effort for change or improvement. Everyone needs people to contribute ideas, take a stand, and get the job done.

We need relationships in order to win allies to our cause. We need to build relationships through which people know and trust us in order to get support from people outside our organizations.

Business partnerships assume a variety of forms. They may be long-term formal, legal commitments or simple short-term ventures to test a market concept. Civil society may form partnerships to promote the Sustainable Development Goals in the local community or champion a human rights issue. Sometimes the reason for seeking a partner is capital, sometimes for expertise and knowledge, sometimes for connections and networking.

Bringing out and taking advantage of the strengths of the individuals or business entities within the partnership adds to the motivation, energy and odds of long-term success. In numbers there is strength.

Partnerships offer a wealth of opportunities for growth – when they occur between the right businesses, organizations or individuals. To succeed, partnerships require more than complementary goals and audiences. Partnerships thrive when their partnership managers themselves get along.

When should you begin? It's better to build relationships and partnerships before you need them or before a conflict arises. However, you can also form relationships during a crisis, and very often a crisis can bring people together. In business, the onset of unfair competition or evidence of graft can bring together local businesses that are competitors. While it may seem unusual, make the most of your organization’s crises. You can build relationships when you are in need because people often want to help.

Building relationships is the groundwork that must be laid before anything else gets done on a project. The bigger the project, the more partnerships you will usually need as a foundation.

Each person or entity in the partnership has individual reasons for participating. Because partners join forces for an assortment of reasons and expectations, sometimes the strengths of each individual may be overlooked. The most obvious strengths will probably be recognized; however, underlying strengths when brought out can often make a big difference in long-term motivation, commitment and success.

It is not beyond the realm of possibilities that your business or NGO may need to build partnerships with people of different cultural backgrounds than your own. Don’t shy away from the opportunities. Approach them respectfully by learning about the person’s culture. Your efforts will go a long way in showing that you care enough to find out about the reality of another person’s life.

Put yourself at the center of another person’s culture and even try to attend their cultural events where you are the minority. If you are willing to take risks by putting yourself in a situation in which you might feel uncomfortable, people will be more inclined to want to get to know you.

If necessary, take a stand against the person's oppression. Actions speak louder than words. People who experience oppression need allies to speak out against injustice. Strong relationships are forged when people act courageously on behalf of each other.

As you build partnerships, you will see that you may have to go beyond your normal terrain. Your neighborhood then becomes the globe – a concept that is enhanced thanks to the Internet. Your message finds resonance around the world. Think global, act local now has a mirror application with think local, act global. Your small business and civic organization can reach similar businesses and groups around the world through partnerships.

According to New Geography, “Think globally, act locally” as well as “Think locally, act globally” are slogans that encourage people to think about the global ramifications of their actions while making an effort to improve things locally. 

In ecological terms, the phrase recognizes the fact that environmental protection is a global problem, but one that average citizens can address by making efforts first in their local communities. Beyond its sustainability implications, the phrase has also been adopted by the business world, and more recently by the Millennials. New Geography points out that the phrase exemplifies that generation’s outlook towards implementing societal changes on a direct, local level and its belief in changing the world one community at a time.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #17 addresses the point of partnerships by urging stakeholders to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.

For instance, thinking and acting locally, the problem of trash in landfills is an enormous one from a global standpoint, and a single person might feel powerless to address the issue. But by making small changes in one’s own life, such as reducing waste and increasing recycling efforts, an individual or group can do his or her part to solve the problem. By mobilizing community groups and local businesses to pool their efforts on a local level, the effects are magnified.

Sustainable development is one avenue for effective formation of horizontal and vertical partnerships that benefit not only direct participants but collateral ones as well.

Now you understand the benefits of building partnerships. But once you decide to reach out and establish them, tell the world about it especially if you’re aligning your efforts with SDG #17. That will certainly add to the mileage that you’ll gain. As I have written in the past, use all forms of social media, Twitter, Facebook, etc., to promote your decision and projects. Follow the “sustainable” or “SDG” community with appropriate hashtags about partnerships, join existing conservations and initiate your own. Share your point of view about reaching out to like-minded stakeholders, explain your success, build followers and become a thought leader about building partnerships.

Tell your local government officials, with which you should create partnerships, and other stakeholders about your plans. Take photographs and post them on Facebook and other sites. Traditional media outreach with press releases is also helpful in this effort because it can neatly tie all traditional and cyber efforts into an understandable package that talks about your business.

Building partnerships is a natural activity for small business and NGO projects.

Send your examples

Join the conversation in cyberspace about boosting your business with partnerships and let me know your impressions. If you have examples of how you used social media to boost outreach, let me know about it and I’ll help you spread the word about your success.

I’d also like to invite you to visit my Thought Leadership website:

http://thoughtleadership.yolasite.com/