Small Business Today Magazine FEB 2015 TAYLOR CONSTRUCTION MANAGMENT | Page 19
EDITORIALFEATURE
Why Collaborations Fail
• There has been a lack of communication and understanding of each other
thereby underutilizing each other’s talents.
• Participants have had one or more bad
experiences and tend to over-generalize about the worth of consortiums.
• One partner puts another down on
the basis of academic credentials or
some professional designation that
sets themselves apart from other
team members.
• Participants exhibit the “Lone Ranger
Syndrome” and prefer the comfort of
communicating only one person.
• Participants exhibit the “I Can Do That
Syndrome” and think that they do the
same exact things that other consortium members do and, thus, see no
value in working together, sharing
projects, or referring business.
• Learn from industries where consortiums are the rule rather than the exception (space, energy, construction,
high-tech, etc.).
• Junior associates of consortium members want to hoard the billing dollars
in-house to look good to their superiors, enhance their billable quotas, or
fulfill other objectives that they are
not sophisticated enough to identify.
• Subcontractor, supplier, support talent,
and vendor information can be shared.
Reasons to give the concept a chance:
• Think of the “ones that got away”; opportunities that could have been created but the contract was awarded to
someone else.
• The marketplace is continually changing.
• Consortiums are inevitable. If we don’t
do it soon and often, others will beat
us to it.
Hank Moore has advised over 5,000 client organizations including public sector agencies, small businesses,
non-profit organizations, and 100 of the Fortune 500.
Contact Hank by phone at 713-668-0664, by email at
[email protected], or visit his website at
www.hankmoore.com.