ThemeCustomers & Market
CardCard 42 of 66
Questions5 to explore

Partnerships

Alliances, collaborations & loose partnerships

Partnerships are where strategic intent meets messy reality, and the agreements and expectations that shape them rarely survive in anyone's head.

Every partnership involves a set of shared assumptions about what each side is contributing, what each side expects, and how decisions will be made when things are unclear. Those assumptions are often never written down, which means they surface only when something goes wrong.

The institutional knowledge worth capturing covers both the formal side, the agreements, terms, and mutual commitments, and the informal side: who the real contacts are, what the working relationship actually looks like, and what has been learned from the partnership so far.

Partnerships also carry history. Understanding why a partnership started, what each side hoped to get from it, and how it has evolved gives anyone inheriting the relationship a foundation to build on.

What to capture

For this part of the company brain, what is worth writing down and keeping current. The goal is not a complete archive but a living record that new people can read and returning people can trust.

Active partnerships

A list of current partnerships with a brief description of each: what the partnership is for, what each party contributes, and who the key contacts are.

Agreements & terms

Where formal agreements are stored and what the key terms are, so anyone who needs to understand the commitments can find them.

Working relationship

How the partnership actually functions day to day: who manages it internally, how communication works, and what the relationship feels like in practice.

Partnership history

Why the partnership started, what was hoped for, what has worked well, and what has been learned, so the context travels with the relationship.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

What are our active partnerships and what is each one actually for?
Where are the formal agreements stored and who has access to them?
Who manages each partnership relationship internally, and what does that involve?
What has each partnership delivered in practice versus what was originally expected?
If the person managing a key partnership left today, what would the next person most need to know?

Things to notice

Partnerships lose momentum without active management. The working relationship that felt solid at signing can become dormant quickly if no one is tending it.
Informal expectations are the ones that cause conflict. What each side assumes about the other is often never stated and is the first thing to differ when something does not go as planned.
Partnership knowledge is held by the person who manages it. When that person moves on, the history and the working relationship often leave with them.