Unlocking Success Through Purposeful Partnerships

Insights from Industry Leaders

In our dynamic world of work, with shifting priorities and competing goals, collaboration often emerges as the cornerstone of success. From recruiting and marketing to fostering inclusive workplaces, leaders across industries recognize the power of purposeful partnerships in driving growth and innovation. Drawing from interviews with Vanessa Brown , CHRO, CPO, Head of People, Zane Zumbahlen , CHRO, Chief People Officer, Ebony Hall , CEO of NCredible Mindz IT Staffing Solutions, and Pascale Hansen , CEO at Zada and TEC Canada Chair, this article distills their diverse experiences into five core themes that emphasize the transformative potential of strategic collaboration and how purposeful partnerships propel organizations forward.

1. Strategic Collaboration Drives HR Excellence

In the realm of talent management, Vanessa's expertise shines as she underscores the importance of strategic HR leadership to achieve overarching business goals and foster a culture of innovation, agility, and continuous improvement. Her experience helps organizations grow when they understand and lean into HR leadership as a strategic and proactive function. Leaning into talent initiatives, from hiring practices to professional development and succession planning, Vanessa emphasizes the importance of being strategic, stating that a purposeful partnership “means really being deliberate and having a plan on how you're going to build that partnership and what that looks like,” asking questions about what the main goal is, what success looks like, and being ready to have conversations when things aren’t working. She adds, “those conversations are a lot easier when you do start to build that partnership.”

Strategic HR planning requires setting expectations up front and then making sure that you have the right people, at the right time, with the right skills, for years to come, to achieve your long-term objectives. Being proactive means reaching out not just when there’s a fire drill, but also giving leaders across the board insights into what projects are happening and providing a constant pulse on how the business is always performing. Rather than view functions like HR, Marketing, and Finance as transactional and purely operational, strategic executives will bring them in to express their vision, explore gaps together, and put in the hard work to manage change together. When they embrace diverse perspectives, work on shifting their mindset, and become more self-aware, leaders are better able to solve their problems and achieve successful outcomes with their managers, teams and organizations.

2. People Mastery: Leveraging Partnerships for Impact

According to Zane Zumbahlen, the primary role of the CHRO is to enable a workforce to perform at their highest level of capability and the keys to the future are engagement, trust, and development. Zane's insights illuminate how purposeful partnerships help leaders grow capability with their employees, developing an impactful relationship between leadership and management. Zane emphasizes the significance of alignment and to “build it through authenticity, vulnerability, seeking input, and a strong trusted relationship through which to partner at the C-level." He has also partnered with an external management consulting and culture shaping training company to help re-enable, re-empower, and bolster the confidence and capability of a healthcare workforce.

Zane describes how organizations need to properly segment skills and effectively upskill their people, demonstrating business acumen by best deploying their team to meet needs, understanding the areas of opportunity for their teams and individual employees, and developing their journey of progress to achieve growth and success.

?In addition to partnering to build a strong team of existing employees, growing a bigger team is another aspect of purposeful partnerships. Ebony Hall acts as a senior recruiter, reaching out to candidates, screening them and preparing everything, as well as creating content for marketing roles. Her clients face challenges such as talent shortage, people who don’t have the skills they said they did, high turnover rates, more people wanting remote work or extra pay for in-person jobs, people joining a company as a steppingstone instead of a commitment, and people being negatively influenced by social media. According to Ebony, “a lot of companies place people where they fit instead of where they belong… You have to figure out what the candidates themselves need as well. When people feel like they’re making a difference and they’re cared about as far as their regular life as well, they’ll stay.”

When companies only look for employees to fit their needs and culture, they’re not taking the candidates’ needs into consideration. However, since employees are driving the ship, their needs must be met as well. In an environment where jobs are tight and layoffs are high, companies are also “losing more than just the salaries. They’re losing all the investment it takes to bring someone on and grow."

As Vanessa also emphasized, Ebony explained that it’s critical for companies to have a plan set in place, to show their people where they are and define their goals to be able to achieve their purpose. Ebony also keeps track of her own work and plans for the next five years. This year, she plans to speak to more clients. As an example, in the week prior to our conversation, Ebony interviewed 125 candidates and reached out to 25 clients. She had screened 788 candidates in the first quarter of 2024 and plans to pivot to give the same energy to client conversations for the rest of the year. She’ll also be featured on a show for startup incubators in May-June this year and aims to leverage the publicity to grow her business, with her 5-year goal to start a call center that trains people with no experience into becoming system and network administrators.

3. Building Inclusive Workplaces Through Collaborative Efforts

Ebony's journey underscores the transformative potential of partnerships in fostering inclusive workplaces. According to Ebony, a purposeful partnership is “two or more people of a team that has alignment in what they’re trying to do, what they’re trying to change, what problems they’re trying to solve.” An example of a purposeful partnership she described was being an IT instructor in a program that taught tech to the formerly incarcerated. She says, “I have a heart for underrepresented people” and by getting on a platform to help those who are under-served, she was able to overcome her own imposter syndrome and open up her own business to make a greater impact.

Vanessa also shared an example of a purposeful partnership that required internal collaboration and executive buy-in to support employees who were working intensively with production teams that traveled with professional sports teams. By collaborating with an internal partner and combining HR and operational insights into a business case, they were able to put together a plan that worked well for everyone. Their case explained the situation in a way that resonated with the CEO and CFO, who originally were not bought into an organizational policy change that would allow employees to recover after a grueling season.

Additionally, Vanessa has collaborated with external consultants to conduct and interpret engagement surveys as well as roll out leadership development programs. Being a good partner to external parties, Vanessa says “it’s really giving them insight into the good, bad, and the ugly, knowing they can be trusted.” When you build trust and transparency into a partnership, then people can do their best work, fully understand the challenges, and engage in developing a successful program. Another recommendation for an inclusive workplace? Vanessa says, “I think all companies should have a policy where their dogs and cats can come to work, or whatever your fur baby of choice is.” Animals can certainly put a smile on our face, and help with creating a happier, more purpose-driven workplace.

4. Navigating Business Challenges Through Collective Solutions

Some of the business challenges that Zane had brought up include navigating the financials of a complicated healthcare space, growing rapidly at a smaller company versus a larger organization, and addressing lack of workforce stability including high attrition rates (low retention), poor management development (low engagement), and employee fatigue. To address these challenges, Zane states that purposeful partnerships are “incredibly important. The trust that you get from the CEO and the C-Suite to try to grow capability amongst the workforce, management team and HR team is all based on the right partnership with the leadership.” Collective solutions can be built when people have informed direction and provide feedback to each other. Examples Zane shared included having 1-1 meetings with the entire team, from executive leadership to HR and management, to understand the pulse of the organization, to become a certified facilitator with the external training company to show he was also accountable, to work closely with the nursing team, and to shadow the cleaning crew to help clean toilets as well, which helped build credibility at all levels.

As an example in the insurance industry, Pascale's entrepreneurial acumen sheds light on the role of partnerships in overcoming business challenges by bringing experts together. Pascale highlights the collaborative approach to problem-solving, sharing how she has developed a network of experts in different fields and emphasizing that “people work with people they know, like, and trust." In one story about a collaboration, she described a partnership with a sales executive at SAP; they would split a room and introduce people to each other during and after networking events, which led to significant business for them both.

5. Cultivating Purpose Through Cross-Sector Collaboration

Across industries, leaders recognize the catalytic power of cross-sector partnerships in driving innovation and achieving purpose. Vanessa, Zane, Ebony, and Pascale collectively advocate for collaborative ecosystems that foster creativity and experimentation. Pascale’s company is aiming to disrupt financial services to remove complicated jargon and truly educate people, and tie being financially healthy with being physically healthy. Pascale says, “in terms of a purpose, I’m very much thinking about the younger generation.” The next generation is struggling, and she wants to help them build wealth while achieving health and wellness. Pascale also recommends having an abundance mindset with multiple revenue streams, describing how referral partnerships can generate strong sales and commissions as well as develop a great network of people.

In conclusion, the collective wisdom of Vanessa, Zane, Ebony, and Pascale underscores the transformative impact of purposeful partnerships in driving business success. By embracing collaboration as a strategic imperative and putting in the hard work to make positive transformation, organizations can unlock new opportunities, foster inclusive cultures, and drive meaningful change in an increasingly interconnected world.

What insights do you have about unlocking success through purposeful partnerships, internally or externally? Share in comments below!

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As a Founder, Head of Strategic Partnerships and Marketing, Janice Dru-Bennett helps customers and partners improve employee experience, disseminate knowledge, promote health & wellbeing, drive effective leadership and stimulate team growth. She thrives on developing marketing channels, creating and nurturing a global ecosystem of alliances that drive value for companies, organizations, and their people.

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Photo Credits: Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash [Collaborative Workforce], devn on Unsplash [Dog in office], Antenna on Unsplash [Business Networking], Images of Ebony, Pascale, Vanessa, and Zane from LinkedIn