When a business is driven by the change it wants to create in the world, it attracts its ‘people like us’. This isn’t just the employees and clients or customers of the business – it is also other businesses that share the same vision of the future.
This is one of the reasons it is so important to articulate your external-facing vision. When others understand the belief you have or the future you want to contribute to, they’ll be open to helping you achieve it.
Businesses and leaders should think expansively when it comes to partnerships.
Think about the different partnerships you can activate when it comes to initiatives or campaigns. Think about impact partners who can help you achieve your social purpose.
Consider product partners. Think about your purpose and how you could bring it to life in different ways opens the door to thinking big – beyond your own remit. Whose products, skills or expertise could help you scale your impact? Alternatively, who could your product, skills or expertise be of value to?
'Buy From the Bush' was a campaign that started in 2019. It was an idea born from a need: the worst drought on record had impacted local regional businesses badly. Small bricks-and-mortar stores weren’t getting the foot traffic they needed to be profitable.
The campaign idea was simple: connect bush businesses with city audiences and ask them to buy. It started as an Instagram account featuring a range of beautiful things people could buy from rural communities impacted by the drought.
Within seven weeks, @buyfromthebush had over 130,000 followers on Instagram. After just four months the campaign had generated millions of dollars of revenue for businesses featured on the Instagram page.
Then the 2019–20 bushfires hit eastern Australia – once again seriously impacting many rural communities.
Now PayPal Australia, is a company driven by its social purpose-
"We believe that now is the time to reimagine money, to democratise financial services, so that managing and moving money is a right for all citizens, not just the affluent."
The alignment to PayPal’s purpose was clear. So they reached out and asked how it might help with the BFTB campaign. PayPal then mobilised a taskforce of engineers and experts to work with BFTB to build a new online marketplace and e-commerce offering.
It was in this way that PayPal became the first official sponsor of the movement.
It was a partnership built on a shared vision of positive change and mission alignment.
In reaching out to BFTB and asking how it might help, PayPal was thinking expansively. It thought not just about which cause it could donate money to, but how it could use its skills and expertise to make a meaningful difference.
Can you see how this is a win-win partnership for both parties?
Yes?
Awesome. Now I’m going to share why it’s not just a win-win. It’s a win-with.
Win-win is the opposite of win-lose: the idea that there has to be a winner and a loser in any kind of negotiation. Win-win means just that. Both parties win. But win-win still adopts the philosophy that the metaphorical pie in any negotiation is a limited size. There is only so much pie to go around so win-win is about carving up the pie, either in equal or unequal portions.
There is another way to consider partnerships that is even more powerful than win-win: win-with.
Win-with works on the assumption that the size of the pie people are negotiating over isn’t limited. By working together with a win-with approach, we can increase the size of the pie to feed more people.
It’s a motivating concept that expands beyond negotiation to partnership and collaboration. The idea that like-minded collaboration can create value and positive impact at scale.
Ask yourself: who could your organisation collaborate with to increase the size of the pie?
At the end of the day, purpose and partnerships do go hand in hand. Approached intelligently, open-mindedly and expansively, partnerships offer so much potential to scale the kind of impact you want to achieve through your organisation.
FREE WEBINAR - PARTNERS IN PURPOSE
Wednesday September 22nd, 12:30pm - 1:30am (AEST)
Action is the single-most fundamental characteristic of being a purpose-led business. Your ability to source partners in purpose provides an opportunity to amplify the impact you are committed to achieving.
I want to help you take this action. So on the Wednesday September 22nd, I’m going to be taking a deeper dive into this topic through our free webinar- Partners in Purpose. We’ll be building on the foundations we’ve covered in this blog and how you can action them, so you can start getting your business on a path to purpose.
This webinar is part three of a six part webinar series covering the six pillars of purpose. You can also register for individual webinars.
...AND for every webinar attendee we also provide one day of education to a girl in need, to create strengthened family and safer communities. So if you have someone that you think might be interested in this series- bring them along!
