How do you negotiate fair resource allocation within your partnership projects?

I would start by clearly identifying the specific resource needs and goals of both Enchanted Tools and our partners for each project. This involves having in-depth discussions to understand each party's priorities, constraints, and desired outcomes.

It's your job to make sure that you're not going in blind into a new project. Understanding what you can offer and what expectations your partners have is important. From there you can explore what resources you can allocate, what resources you can't and how you fill the gap between expectations and delivery

Maintaining open, transparent communication would be crucial. I'd foster an environment where all parties feel comfortable openly discussing their capabilities, limitations, and expectations around resource commitments.

I would work to ensure that each partner's unique contributions and value-add to the project are recognized and factored into resource allocation decisions. This helps create a sense of equity.

In the upstream oil & gas industry in Ghana, partnerships are common. With high stakes and relatively risky projects, bringing together different entities with different cultures requires extensive planning, decisions on milestones, responsibilities, staffing as well as technical expertise and revenue sharing. Parties must come to the table and decide on how their teams will work together and game out various scenarios and reporting structures. Perhaps most crucially, potential risks must be envisioned and accounted for- including the impact of 3rd party/external stakeholders such as regulators & local communities on the project. With proper planning and regular scheduled meetings, even the most high stakes partnerships can work well.

Expectation management is one of the most crucial skills you can master in partnerships. Your job is to be the project manager of the partnership and have clear expectations for yourself and your external & internal stakeholders on what's expected, when it's expected, and how to deal with conflicts or missed deadlines. Assign clear ownership, responsibility and work to ensure that there is accountability for completion. Partnerships is a team sport and all players needs to know what they can expect from each other

Clearly defining and documenting expectations around resource commitments, timelines, and deliverables from the outset would be important to avoid misunderstandings later

Building in some flexibility to adjust resource allocations as project needs evolve would be wise. I'd advocate for regular check-ins to reassess and realign as needed

If allocation disagreements arise, I would aim to address them promptly and objectively, focusing on data and project goals rather than emotions or politics