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Why Most Strategic Relationships Don't Fail the Way You Think They Do When a strategic relationship fails, executives naturally look for the event that caused it. A missed product launch. A disagreement over finances. A customer complaint. A leadership change. A contract dispute. Those events certainly end relationships. But they are rarely the underlying cause of the relationship ending. After spending more than three decades helping organizations build strategic partnership

Every quarter, executive teams gather to review the health of their business or organization. Revenue. Margins. Cash flow. Sales pipeline. Customer satisfaction. Operational performance. These dashboards are indispensable. They tell us whether we are winning. But they all have one thing in common. They tell us what has already happened. After spending more than three decades helping organizations build strategic partnerships, integrate acquisitions, and lead transformat

Organizations enter partnerships, mergers and acquisitions with enthusiastic executive optimism. They fail with frustrated executive confusion. The business case was compelling. The market opportunity was significant. The strategic rationale appeared sound. Yet 18 months to 3 years later, the relationship has become more distraction than success. What happened? After participating in more than 140 strategic alliances and the integrating nearly 100 acquisitions across public

OG Anunoby makes game winning shot following basics of going to the rim (Vincent Carchietta/Imagn/Reuiters) The shooting skill, size, height, and speed of today’s NBA players is unworldly. However, ultimately what won this game was doing the basics, while losing the game was due to ignoring them. The first 5 seconds of this video says it all. OG Anunoby inbounded the pass. Nobody guarded him. (Spurs fail in the basics) He went right to the rim! (basics done). Knicks

Knowing when to exit a relationship matters How long is enough before you press the button to exit on a failed strategic partnership, alliance, merger or acquisition? The best answer is “as soon as possible”. However, most executives wait until the pain of trying to make it work is just too much to bear. That is always too late and the results can be disastrous. Failed partnerships and alliances typically take 18 months to reach this point. Failed mergers and acquisitions,