If you’ve been in the outsource industry for more than five minutes you probably know that buyer-seller relationships are, well, complicated. And just when you think you have the collaboration thing nailed, more complications can ensue.
If your recent experiences with new or renewal contract negotiations are something akin to visiting the dentist for a root canal, we’d like to introduce you to a much better – and pain-free! – way to go about negotiating. It’s called Getting to We: a five-step process for crafting business relationships with the intent to drive collaborative partnerships.
What can a professor who teaches democratic theory tell us about collaborative, non-coercive business and outsourcing relationships?
When I hear Daniel Corsten speak about collaboration and trust in business relationships it’s music to my ears.
This month’s blog honours best-selling author Cynthia Barton Rabe, author of The Innovation Killer. Tragically, Rabe passed away in 2011, killed by a hit and run driver at age 47—just five years after her revolutionary book on innovation was published.
I’ve talked at length in this series recently about how academics and big thinkers have buttressed the importance of trust and collaboration in outsource deals. While it may seem like an anomaly, or at least a new idea, to mention cooperation and contracts in the same breath, it’s neither.
We know that trust, ethical behaviour and collaboration go hand-in-hand in our personal and social relationships. But how widespread are those things in our business and outsourcing relationships? Obviously they should be!
This article originally appeared in Outsource Magazine Issue #29 Autumn 2012
After two years of blogging for Outsource I hope readers have at least heard of Vested Outsourcing and maybe even read one of our three books. But perhaps you have some doubts and concerns, so you are still waiting on the sidelines. All too often we hear, “I like the theory of Vested, but does it really work in the real world? Are companies (especially ones people have heard of!) adopting the Vested approach?”
This month’s column pays a tribute to Elinor Ostrom, who shared the Nobel Prize award in economic science in 2009 with Oliver Williamson. Ostrom, who died at age 78 on June 12, was cited by the Nobel Committee for “her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons,” a term that refers to resources that are owned or shared in common among communities.
My last two columns on Umair Haque and Joseph Stiglitz have shifted the focus a bit to the adaptations that global businesses face as more and more challenges to the traditional ideas surrounding capitalism and globalisation emerge.
A major focus of this series is on how academics and economists have transformed modern thinking about the nature of the business and outsourcing contract, from its relationship to the firm and how it is used and governed to its relationship on pricing and total cost.
It’s long past time for a change in the way outsourcing contracts are negotiated and managed. In 1968 the legal scholar Ian R. Macneil observed that most contracts are ill-equipped to address the reality of business needs.
This article originally appeared in Outsource Magazine Issue #23 Spring 2011
Leading academics charted a path that challenges the conventional definition of winning. Smart companies are applying these concepts, showing that win-win thinking is not just something nice to say: it’s smart business – and really is beautiful…
