Web Guide to Loans & Credit Helen Richardson's Guide to Loans & Credit Solutions

The two development components—the Stages of Partnership Development and the Stages of Relationship Development—will help you to understand the way partnerships work best and give you the tools to evaluate your relationships and pinpoint where to make changes. The best blueprint, however, is only as good as the user. For the Partnership Continuum model to be successful, you’ll need the skills to read the blueprint and then implement it. Throughout the rest of Part One I will explain each section of the model and show you how to use it both diagnostically (to see how your partnership is doing) and prescriptively (to show what you can do to improve your partnership). I’ll also go into greater detail about the Six Partnering Attributes that make up your Partnering Intelligence. Along the way you’ll find all the assessments and other tools you’ll need to help you assess and increase your PQ.

There is a saying inscribed on a plaque that hangs in my office: “The better I get, the better we get.” For me the sentiment behind those words captures the essence of partnership. Partnership is about helping you get what you want. And the better you know what you want, the better your partners can help you achieve it.

Comments Off

You can think of it in terms of how the human body flourishes in the earth’s atmosphere. The warmth of the sun keeps the body functioning and comfortable; the rich air nourishes it with oxygen. Now imagine for a moment that body being transported to Mars. If left unprotected, how well would it survive? At the moment of arrival, it would be gasping for oxygen, and within minutes the frigid Martian atmosphere would freeze it stiff. Such an environment could not support human life. On earth we are generally not conscious of the atmosphere; we take it for granted as we move about beneath its invisible blanket. But it is there, protecting, supporting, and nurturing our lives. Likewise, the atmosphere we create in our partnerships using the Six Partnering Attributes—Self-Disclosure and Feedback, Win-Win Orientation, Ability to Trust, Future Orientation, Comfort with Change, and Comfort with Interdependence—will determine how well we survive.

At the top and bottom of the model are two parallel sets of stages of development: partnership and relationship, defining the natural progressions that people and groups go through as they develop and grow. Yet, these stages are as fluid as they are predictable—while you can predict their occurrence within a period of time, they are easily influenced by outside forces that can cause them to change and even revert to previous stages.

Comments Off

Knowing your partnering quotient and the attributes necessary formanaging the partnership is only half of what you need for increasing  your Partnering Intelligence. The other half is understanding the process of creating healthy, trusting, and mutually beneficial partnerships. Partnerships don’t just happen. They are designed. The Partnership Continuum model (Figure 1) is the blueprint for creating successful partnerships. This model has been used successfully by thousands of people. It offers you and your partner a tested step-bystep approach to developing your partnership. By following the model, both of you will increase your Partnering Intelligence as you learn how to do the following: Note that the PDCA cycle is embedded throughout the model to monitor the implementation of the other components as the partnership and relationship unfold.

At either end of the spectrum are the extremes of past and future orientation. Organizations that are mired in past orientation are closed to new ideas, concepts, or approaches in shaping their strategic directions. Those that are future oriented tend to be open to change and innovation. These dynamics impact the culture of the organization and are an important element in determining whether the cultural climate is supportive of alliance development. Although partnerships in real life flow in either direction, we want to encourage growth for the future.

Comments Off

You will need to analyse your business product by product and division by division to eradicate low gross margin areas, either by working on the cost of goods side or, perhaps, by removing some product lines or activities. This could take considerable time.

Reliance on a few major customers

It will usually be a long-term project for a business to broaden its customer base. Where the total market is confined to a small number of customers this problem cannot be remedied, but even where other customers exist it can be remarkably difficult for an established business to undertake the cultural changes that might be necessary in finding new customers.

Reliance on too few products

A business that relies on too few products for the majority of its sales is highly vulnerable to changes in taste, fashion and attitudes as well as advances in technology, loss of patent protection and/or changes in legislation. As with reliance on too few customers, having too few products puts sales, profitability and associated business value at severe risk.

Comments Off

If you are aware of any impending changes to legislation (which might come out of the EU for example), it is vital that you begin to implement the changes to your business immediately to counter any negative impacts.

We now move onto operational impediments that could take more than four years to remove, if indeed they can be removed at all. A solution will depend on the severity of the problem in your particular business and whether a remedy is in your hands or not. Business is losing money

It is vital to tackle this problem immediately, regardless of when you plan to sell. But, losing money is only the effect and you must identify the causes for the losses (which could be any of dozens of reasons) and address those. Because the reasons for losing money are so numerous, it is impossible to suggest a solution to this problem here.

Comments Off

These impediments need to be addressed immediately, not because they will necessarily take the longest to fix, but because they are fundamental barriers to a successful exit. Ideally, you will have addressed them at startup. If you did not, you should address them now. Tax efficient ownership of a ‘qualifying trading company’ To ensure that you minimise the impact of tax on your disposal proceeds you should get expert tax advice, especially on Capital Gains Tax and Inheritance Tax. As you never know when you might be forced to exit your business, you should get this advice immediately.

Lack of a shareholders’ or partners’ agreement This could prevent you from disposing of your business when and how you wish. You should obtain expert advice on this immediately as, depending on your relationship with other shareholders, it could take considerable time to put an agreement in place. If you are starting a business with coowners, you should enter into an agreement when the shares are issued.

Comments Off

All businesses are different in their way and each will have different aspects of their structure or operations that could be improved. A thorough analysis of your business should highlight its impediments to sale and, once they are highlighted, removing them should be, in most cases, a matter of business common sense.

The key to removing most impediments is to allow yourself sufficient time, because some things – such as time qualification for taper relief from CGT – can only be achieved by the passing of time, whereas others by their nature (for example, expanding your customer base or product lines) will need considerable time to fix. Other impediments, although just as damaging to your business’s value, will take a shorter time to remove. Although it is impossible to be too specific about the time that it will take to remove impediments, I will consider some of the major impediments below in terms of how long it should take to remove them. Another way of looking at this is to consider which impediments you should tackle first and how long should you allow for the task.

Comments Off

Identifying impediments is the first step on the road to fixing them. Some impediments and barriers to exit are obvious: for example, you either have an agreement that addresses all the important exit issues between shareholders, or you do not. Operational impediments in your business could become obvious once you have reviewed those listed in this blog. A more thorough and scientific approach to identifying operational impediments, however, is to analyse the business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (known as a SWOT analysis), as part of the process of producing a business plan (which should be, in turn, part of your exit planning process). Done thoroughly, a SWOT analysis will usually highlight operational impediments to sale.

Comments Off

In business disposals, like most other areas of life, first impressions can be important. A business’s superficial appearance can influence whether a prospective buyer will continue to pursue the opportunity. This impediment is less critical than when the owner himself has run out of steam (resulting in a series of longer-term problems) and can sometimes be solved with an extensive tidying up, or merely by providing new uniforms to factory workers and applying a coat of paint to the factory.

Lack of adequate records

This includes such things as records of suppliers, or customers, or subcontractors that have not been properly maintained. It should be a relatively easy matter to ensure that these are collated and presented in a business-like way. Also, it is necessary to ensure that all intangible an intellectual property has been properly valued and ownership properly documented.

Out of date computer equipment

There is a temptation when a business is being sold to leave updating of computer equipment to the purchasers. This could be a mistake as it adds to the look and feel of a run-down business in decline. It could be preferable to update these before sale as part of the cosmetic clean up.

Comments Off