Don't just do business. Make allies.

You're invested in your work, but you may be the only one. Sometimes, maybe often, you feel like the people you deal with in business are only concerned about their own needs, that your success is your concern alone. It's discouraging, and sometimes debilitating. And not necessarily true.

Just as we lean on and celebrate life with our personal friends, we need relationships in business that help us learn and grow in good times, and stand with us in challenging times. Wishful thinking? Let's look at finding and making allies in business.

 Who is an ally versus a stakeholder?

 A stakeholder has a vested interest in your work, and you theirs. There's a required relationship, a minimum exchange. Stakeholders seeks to satisfy their needs or protect their share through interacting with you.

 Allies see their interests as intertwined. If one party walks away without their basic need recognized and addressed, tension will reemerge another time, perhaps with costlier consequences. Trust and mutual benefit become equally important as self interest.

Who's an ally vs a customer?

A customer needs something from someone, and chose your product or service today. Maybe it was the low price, the ad or the flyer that brought them in the door. At best, a customer is trying you out as a long-term source. They're expensive to get and hard to keep.

An ally senses that you are thinking about their needs before they realize them. You help them achieve their life goals and are dependably there when they're in need. An ally chooses you as long as they can afford you. They give you the benefit of the doubt.

Who's an ally vs an employee?

An employee trades their time and talents for your money. The fulfill duties as assigned. They may or may not refer you, they may not even like you. But they rely on you, so they stick around as long as it works.

An ally wants to help you grow your business or make your look good. Moreover, they want to grow with you. They see their success and yours as inseparable, so they speak of you like they'd speak of themselves.

Who's an ally vs a supplier?

A supplier has something you want or need to run your organization. If their product or service works for you, they're happy to sell it to you. They'd just as easily replace you with a customer who asks for less, pays more or pays without questioning. They'd rather charge you more and work with you less, but the market dictates the offering.

An ally gives you their expertise, not just their product or service. They're at the table helping you figure out problems. They know something you don't and are eager to share. You're helping improve their product or service with useful feedback. The relationship is long and prosperous.

How do we create allies?

Express your purpose in improving lives

Whether you're in the private, public or non-profit sectors, building trust in your organization begins with telegraphing you're not just in it for your own benefit. What legacy are you hoping to leave? What value are you creating? Jim Stengel in his book Grow outlined five timeless purposes - missions to improve life for people: 

1. Creating connection
2. Enabling exploration
3. Eliciting joy
4. Evoking pride
5. Improving society

Having a clearly defined and executed purpose in improving lives will naturally reshape your organization. It will encourage people who support that mission to work for you and with you. It will drive those at cross purposes out. Such a healthy, self sustaining process keeps an organization productive. It's constantly assuring you're surrounded by allies united in purpose.

Stop taking orders and start applying your curiosity and imagination

Alliances are built on your ability to anticipate your allies' needs and help them reach tomorrow's potential. You can't help with that when you're busy running on yesterday's assumptions and today's requests.

Conduct research. Seek to understand not just what people want today, but why they want it. Asking why, instead of what, gives you more latitude to apply your expertise in imagining solutions. Research can be formal - surveys, focus groups, interviews - or informal - coffees and lunches on a regular basis. You're blessed if you get the chance to follow a day in the life of your customer, client or stakeholder. Whatever the mode, you should walk away a written profile of the direction your allies are moving, and revisit it regularly. 

Reimagine your offerings as part of a life support system

Your products, services and initiatives are parts in a framework or system of supports your allies build to manage their lives and business. Any individual offering is less important than a well-founded structure. Products, services and initiatives must be constantly redesigned to fit changing circumstances and interactions with other products and services to remain valuable.

Take the initiative to gather a team together regularly and compare the key values offered by your product, service or initiative with the changing requirements of your allies. List all the possible new ways to adapt to your allies changing circumstances, without presuming your product, service or initiative is the right tool for the job anymore. Then, bring that blue sky list back to earth by comparing it to your current offering and organizational purpose. Where you can adapt without steering way off course, make changes. Make changes swiftly and regularly because the longer you wait, the higher the risk you become irrelevant. In creative fields, this is called design thinking. In startup culture, it's called agile. In every organization, it's called smart.

If those changes would distract from your organization's stated purpose or its' strengths, it's time for a talk with your ally about a change in your relationship.

 Get and give constructive feedback

Gauging customer or stakeholder satisfaction is nothing new. Having the discipline to put that feedback to use is tricky. It's also important to ask for constructive feedback, not just approval. Find ways to ask why.

Giving constructive feedback to stakeholders and customers is an odd concept. The point isn't to tell them how they can be better customers or stakeholders for you, though a strong relationship may allow or encourage that tough talk. More so, giving feedback means being a mirror into the lives of your customers and stakeholders. Help them find solutions when they feel stuck on a problem. Check if they're really intending the outcome of their actions and words. Give information that helps them understand the world they're navigating. Everyone is trying to improve their lot, and those who help are allies indeed.