How can you create a sense of ownership among employees in partnerships?

One of the best ways is to highlight the personal benefits they stand to gain. Whether it's brokering a multimillion-dollar deal or embarking on an unconventional collaboration, emphasize the opportunity it presents for professional growth. One must encourage employees to approach these partnerships with a playful and innovative mindset, rather than seeing them as routine tasks. Highlight that such engagements not only offer tangible benefits but also hone critical business skills like collaboration, negotiation, strategic thinking, and creativity. By linking the partnership's success to their personal and professional growth, employees are more likely to feel invested and take ownership.

It's helpful to any program to have a vision statement and some sort of rally and framework for your team to get behind. Once they know what the program is standing for and seeking to accomplish, it's then on the leader to empower the employees to operate with autonomy to accomplish their goals/KPI's. But the leader must constantly reiterate the vision and make sure everything the team is striving for lines up to that vision and every little milestone that gets closer to that vision should be celebrated.

Like any catalyst for success, getting senior leadership's continual endorsement and evangelism helps spread the importance of partnerships. Building partnerships should be a key strategic pillar for the organization as a whole - a part of visions and values. Not just a side initiative. Because this will align the Partnership Team's effort to the greater corporate strategy and bring much needed urgency and exposure to how partnerships benefit the employees and the company as a whole. Then the Partnerships Team can complement this through internal (and external) enablement. This really takes hold if these efforts can be supported with tangible incentives for success driven through partnerships. Start with buy-in and build from there!

Empower employees by involving them in decisions and goal-setting. Give them ownership over their roles and recognize their achievements. Encourage open communication and value their input. Offer growth opportunities to show they're vital to the partnership's journey. Highlight how their efforts impact success, fostering a strong sense of pride and ownership.

One thing I've found very helpful is involving employees in decision-making processes that affect their work. It creates a sense of ownership. One thing I found incredibly powerful as a business owner is soliciting for feedback, ideas, suggestions and advice from employees. Empowering them to make choices on their own within the scope of their work can increase their commitment, autonomy and accountability to the organisation.

Incentives are very helpful in getting employees of other teams to engage in your partnership efforts. Let's face it, supporting your partners and the partnerships' teams efforts are rarely a part of their job description. If you're going to ask someone to go above and beyond, you should incentivize or compensate for that effort in some way. This can be done with: - Competitions for prizes - Spiffs & gifts - Public reward & praise - Marketing their success & contribution - Additional bonuses

Lead your industry in commissions and bonuses and watch what happens. Fortune 500 companies always have the strongest sales forces and compensation for this reason.

In previous roles, I've had team members have a quarterly project/experiment that they own and deliver on at the end of the quarter. If they have an idea for something that could improve the program, that becomes a quarterly project that they own and implement. The goal for any leader is to have their entire teams fingerprints on the program and that has to start with giving them ownership of building it.

The best way to encourage collaboration is to work in public, share ideas and progress, and celebrate every single win in front of the team no matter how big or small. You have to build internal champions one by one. Put the effort in to find ways to collaborate and publicize the work and outcome. The more you share, the more tangible your collaboration and the value it creates becomes to others. I think of it as internally marketing partnerships and the work that goes into making them successful for both your customers, your teams, and each organization.

Another helpful way to create a sense of ownership among employees is to encourage collaboration and communication among teams??. You can create or facilitate teamwork, cooperation and coordination across various functions within the organisation. Is your process seamless? Can employees from various departments work together in an open and honest approach? You can create synergy across departments by promoting a culture of information sharing across board, problem-solving together and conflict resolution. This will enhance their relationship and increase productivity.

Make sure you listen to employees. The more that they feel heard, the more they'll feel respected and valued. Employees are often told what to do. But give them a chance to share their opinions and ideas. This is not just in brainstorming sessions. It's in other conversations as well. This will help build trust among team members and a greater sense of ownership in the work.