...to achieve promotions to senior positions in IT. Based on personal chats with CEOs and head-hunters. The Top Seven Skills Countdown, over seven days...starting with the powerful number seven...
7. Trusted Partnerships with External Suppliers
You must have trusted partnerships that go way beyond customer supplier relationships. Yes, have a contract (if it comes out of the drawer your relationship is finished), Yes, have service level agreements for this purpose and most of all, Yes have someone responsible and identified for overseeing all external relationships.
Build powerful trusted partnerships -- that deliver, every single time, in which:
You
Give your partner strategic involvement
Pay them early if they deliver well and fast
Offer secondments
Shout their name from the rooftops
Your "Partner"
Gives you advice on market
Provides Internal support
Is flexible
When they are with your "customers" they are you in brand, spirit and loyalty
I will never forget with absolute dread the day my boss came in after negotiating a partnership, he started with the words "I have screwed them down completely - we have got such a cheap deal" - and over the next two years did we pay for it.
PS The three most powerful ways to handle fear. One - live a parallel life. Next Saturday decide everything is fantastic - the best day of your life - and treat everything that happens accordingly -fear nothing. Next Sunday do the opposite - decide everything is apalling - the worst day of your life - and treat everything that happens accordingly - fear everything. Then, on Monday, if and when you wake up, ask yourself this question, which of those two days did I enjoy more? And live your life accordingly.
Tomorrow - the most immediete, analytical and logical way to handle, wait for it - REJECTION...