Partnerships and Ecosystems Series #5: Channel Conflict, Control, and the Politics of Partner Growth

Partnerships become political the moment they touch revenue, account ownership, or customer influence. That is why channel conflict is not a side issue. It is one of the main reasons otherwise sensible partner strategies fail. Conflict starts when internal teams and external partners both think they own the same opportunity.

Partnerships and Ecosystems Series #4: Integrations as Product, Distribution, or Both

Integrations get treated as an easy partnership category because they look concrete. Build the connection, publish the listing, announce the launch. But integrations do very different jobs, and companies get in trouble when they do not know which job they are funding. Some integrations are product parity. The customer expects

Partnerships and Ecosystems Series #3: Partner Fit: When an Ecosystem Actually Makes Sense

Not every product needs an ecosystem. Many companies would be better off fixing product fit, segmentation, onboarding, or direct sales execution before they try to mobilize partners. An ecosystem is valuable only when outside companies can add something the core company should not or cannot do alone at the same

Partnerships and Ecosystems Series #2: What Kind of Partner Motion Are You Actually Building?

Most partnership programs fail because the company calls everything a partnership. Referral, reseller, services, integration, marketplace, alliance, OEM, implementation, and co-sell motions all get grouped under one umbrella. That makes planning easier on slides and much harder in practice. The first job is naming the motion correctly. A referral partner

Partnerships and Ecosystems Series #1: Partnerships Are Not a Shortcut to Growth

Partnerships get romanticized because they seem to promise borrowed distribution. A logo, an integration, a reseller, a cloud listing, a strategic alliance, and suddenly the market opens. In practice, most partnership programs create activity without creating enough customer value to justify the operating load. A partnership is not a shortcut

Decision Memos and Written Operating Culture — Series Index

Decision Memos and Written Operating Culture is a 10 part series. Use this index as the table of contents and read the posts in order. Read the series in...

Decision Memos and Written Operating Culture Series #10: The Written Operating Culture Audit

The easiest way to test written operating culture is not to count documents. Document volume may mean the company is serious. It may also mean the company has learned to turn ambiguity into text without turning text into decisions. The audit should ask whether writing improves operating quality. Start with

Decision Memos and Written Operating Culture Series #9: AI and the Written Operating Layer

AI changes the written operating layer in two directions. Drafting and retrieving written work now take far less effort. So does creating confident-looking text that has not earned its confidence. The useful role is compression and review support. A model can turn meeting notes into a draft decision brief, compare
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