Jeff Pundyk, CMO.com

In my last post I suggested that one way to let new ideas in was to partner with those who have capabilities you admire. Partner to learn, I said. But there’s a precursor that I should have mentioned. Before you can partner to learn, you must learn to partner.

I used to think that partnership equaled risk. Partners meant more conflict and less accountability. My rule of thumb was to limit partnerships and, when I did partner, to limit the number of players–and then to manage them to within an inch of all of our lives.

And, as a result, I got exactly what I feared most: partners who did not act as a team and who often left their best ideas for somebody who would appreciate them more.

I had to learn how to partner, but before that I had to understand why I was partnering in the first place. Let’s start there. Why partner? Because you have no choice. There is just too much specialized expertise needed to stay current. Because opportunity and expectations are changing too fast to develop all the skills needed in-house. Because the demands of anticipating and managing transformation are immediate. Because there is no single solution to the problem at hand. Because understanding an array of technologies opens new options. And, because if you go in with the right attitude, you’ll learn something significant, get a much better outcome, extend you network, and maybe even have some fun. Read the full article here.