Happy New Year!
A new year brings new opportunities, although I firmly believe that we don’t have to wait for a new year to see opportunities. After all, every new day brings new opportunities. Nevertheless the start of a new year is often the moment to look ahead: what will the new year bring? Well, like you, I can’t predict the future, so I don’t know what the year will bring. What I do know is what is in my plans for the new year:
My mission for 2014 continues to “make partnerships and alliances simple” to enable you to be on the success side of the 80% rule. My personal focus will be on the creation and facilitation of alliance related content and on nurturing customer relations. I will be out even more to spread the message. To enable myself to do so, I am expanding my team to offload myself from everything that is not involved with my focus tasks.
One of the cornerstones for 2014 is the Alliance Mastery Academy. My team and I have been working hard on the Academy and I shared this photo on social media last week, showing that the framework is almost ready. Everything is on schedule for a timely launch on the 15th of January.
My personal involvement through teaching, coaching, facilitating and speaking is one of the other cornerstones for 2014: a number of alliance management workshops for customers is already in the schedule and in April there will be the Alliance Mastery Masterclass in Amsterdam. (Did you already reserve April 3 and 4 in your schedule?).
My website continues to publish two new articles every week and the Collaborative Business Podcast just turned into a weekly podcast. Last Thursday the year kicked off with a conversation with Bruce Dönszelmann of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. Coming Thursday Snehal Desai of Dow Water & Process Solutions will be my guest.
I will not dare making predictions for the development of the alliances and partnerships profession in 2014. So let’s stick to what I expect will happen:
- Creating alliances as a strategic instrument to grow organizations and to create new products and solutions will continue to rise in importance
- Collaboration will be the new competition
- Awareness will rise among senior management that properly collaborating in partnerships and alliances is a profession on its own
What are your expectations for 2014?
Share them in the comments below.