Your partnership team is divided on priorities. How can you bring everyone together for success?
Differing views in the boardroom? Share your strategies for unifying a team with divergent priorities.
Your partnership team is divided on priorities. How can you bring everyone together for success?
Differing views in the boardroom? Share your strategies for unifying a team with divergent priorities.
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Aligning your team's priorities with the company's strategic direction and customer needs is a critical component of success. A focus on other areas will not yield desired outcomes and cause friction within the organization.
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To unify a partnership team with differing priorities, try these strategies: 🤝 Establish common goals: Align the team by identifying shared objectives that benefit everyone. This creates a collective purpose and focus. 🗣️ Facilitate open discussions: Allow team members to voice their perspectives. Encouraging transparency can lead to compromise and mutual understanding. 📊 Prioritize and delegate: Define the most critical tasks and assign responsibilities based on each member’s strengths, ensuring all priorities are addressed.
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To begin, take all partners into a single team with common focus. upfront early decision making on priorities is necessary to streamline the limited resources to deliver desired tangible outcome. That needs translating thoughts/perspectives into write ups to build on from each other. brainstorm different views to build a convincing story that is acceptable to majority. Develop contingency plan to address the risks of decision made. Secondly, inculcate the culture of decision executive taking the call by listening to the members of the decision making body. Whatever decision taken by the decision executive, of course with reasoning and transparency, that will be final and all members wholeheartedly work towards implementing the decision.
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Alignment requires clarity on the strategic purpose of each partner, their unique capabilities and business expectations. It also requires clarity on the decisions making process. If there’s no alignment overall, maybe try stepping back to establish alignment on these two items before going back to the earlier conversation. Importantly, there needs to be agreement on who will break ties ahead of the discussion. For example, a compelling regional case over a global one may have to be broken by the global sales head as it her/his neck on the line. Having a clear decision making model and transparency of criteria can help quickly advance the team toward a productive outcomes. It also enables better adaptability should conditions change.
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When your partnership team is divided on priorities, bringing everyone together starts with clear communication and alignment. Facilitate an open discussion where each team member shares their perspective. Identify common goals and areas of overlap to build consensus. Prioritize tasks that drive the most impact and align with shared objectives. Encourage collaboration by highlighting the benefits of working together toward success. Regular check-ins and transparent communication help ensure everyone stays on the same page. How do you unite your team around shared goals? Share your approach!
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In my experience, aligning a divided team starts with understanding everyone's perspectives. One time at work, we faced conflicting priorities between expanding our eSIM service and focusing on shared workspace bookings. What helped was creating an open space for discussion and linking individual goals to our company mission. Here’s what worked: - Showing how priorities align with the bigger picture. - Ensuring each team feels responsible for specific outcomes. - Identifying short-term tasks that unite both teams. This process helped reduce friction and allowed us to deliver integrated solutions for our clients, ultimately leading to success across all services.
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To unify a divided partnership team, use the WIFIM (What's In It For Me) approach. Start by identifying each individual’s priorities and wins to understand their motivations. Then, highlight the interdependencies between these individual goals, showing how one person's success supports another's. By coaching the team to see these connections, they begin to realise that their individual wins are tied to collective success. Once they grasp how collaboration leads to shared victories, they’re more likely to work together effectively towards the common goal. WIFIM helps align personal interests with team outcomes.
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When a partnership team faces differing priorities, fostering open communication is key. Start by organizing a dedicated meeting where everyone can voice their perspectives, ensuring that all opinions are valued. Next, facilitate a brainstorming session to identify common goals that align with the organization's mission. Encourage collaboration by forming small, cross-functional groups to tackle specific challenges, promoting a sense of unity. Lastly, celebrate small wins together to reinforce teamwork and keep spirits high, reminding everyone that success is a collective journey.
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If your team is divided on priorities, you might lack a unifying team vision and mission statement. If this is the case, I would start with setting up a core purpose / mission statement workshop with the team, focusing on why the team exists. Make it a fun session, and be sure it is a safe space. After this workshop, I would set up a second one, focusing on the team tasks and priorities; building on the mission statement, ranking the tasks and bringing alignment on the prioritization of tasks through discussion and problem solving together. Make sure to not end it before you have buy-in from everyone in the team, and document the result. This is now something the entire team can go back to in the future, should issues come up.
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Have a dialogue and let both sides listen to and understand the other side. Look at organizational goals and help both teams to come up with priorities in line with organizational objectives, goals and donor expectations. Avoid the spirit of competition.
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