Don’t mistake a transaction, even a friendly and efficient transaction, as true collaboration. If someone arranges to purchase widgets from a widget-maker that’s the essence of the make-buy decision but it’s not the crowning achievement of a real partnership. Or as Ben Gomes-Casseres puts it, “a partnership is not a purchase order.” Writing this week […]
Blog
Vested Outsourcing Makes the Innovative Impulse Real
We all talk about the need for innovation to energize, grow and add continuous value to outsourcing relationships. Innovation is easier said than done however, and a recent article by Stephanie Overby in CIO magazine underscores this. A survey of European CIOs found that 67 percent of IT leaders rely on outsource providers to turn […]
The Lion Listens and Empowers Before He Roars
Something called the “modern day fable” of the Ant and the Lion is making the rounds of various inboxes—it’s amusing and as most fables go, timely, or shall I say timeless? It presents some serious food for thought about the way we and our organizations work, collaborate and grow over time. Here’s a link to […]
Costing Out the Cost of the Contract
I’ve talked recently about the need for outsource contracting in a transparent and flexible Vested environment, but what about the actual cost of establishing a business contract? While there is obviously no standard cost template for contract negotiation services—contracts can vary from the exceedingly short and simple to the immensely long and complex and you […]
Choose Transparency for the Win-Win
Transparency is another of the oft-used buzzwords that is more spoken about and wished-for than actually implemented. I’ve always been a fan of Seth Godin, but I was struck by this latest post from Seth Godin that talks about a sort anti-transparency movement which – in my opinion – is not healthy. The first example […]
Price or Value? Go Beyond the Quick Price Reduction Fix
Adjusting to the Vested Outsourcing business model requires a major change in thinking and approach to total costs, pricing and value in the outsource relationship. Moving away from the conventional and quick-fix focus on price to a shared value and collaborative mind-set that might even involve leaving money on the table is a difficult concept […]
A Good Deed Deserves Another
By now it’s clear that anyone who follows my blog knows I am passionate about win-win thinking. Today’s blog is a history lesson in playing nice. Radiolab recently featured a fantastic podcast titled “One Good Deed Deserves Another” that showcases Robert Axelrod’s famous findings about the prisoner’s dilemma. The podcast is a highly entertaining history lesson in […]
Vesting and Investing in Shared Capitalism
When is executive compensation enough? When do executive salaries and bonuses actually hurt the best of interests of a company? Given the history of compensation over the several decades, the answer from the executive suite would of course be “Never!” But another view is emerging, as highlighted by Vivek Wadhwa in a viewpoint column last […]
How Delay Can Be Faster In the Long Run
The disaster unfolding in Japan has me thinking about several things, like how quickly can a major world economy recover and just how resilient can supply chains possibly be in the face of “black swan” events of such unpredictably immense proportions? These are major questions confronting the world’s third largest economy and while the outcome […]
Vested Outsourcing Is Not Gainsharing!
DC Velocity’s Basic Training column this week has an interesting take on gainsharing and the value that it can bring to the logistics outsourcing world. It’s mostly spot-on and very kind. But I must firmly set the record straight when the authors, Art van Bodegraven and Kenneth B. Ackerman assert in their “Gain sharing, pain […]
