Building Time Sensitive Consensus for Strategic Collaborations

Christopher Sickels, Executive Director of Development, University of California - San Diego

Christopher Sickels, Executive Director of Development, University of California - San Diego

We live in a business world struggling for predictable, competitive, and manageable outcomes during a time of rapid job trading, short-term cash-out deals, seemingly uncontrollable supply change issues, and our old 1970s nemesis - inflation. Where did all our valuable time and group loyalty go?

The response has been a tragic return to self-motivated actions, apathy, and the all too common peaceful strategic planning respite time hunkering down in our cars for a meaningless, sleepy, and forgetful zoom call. Not exactly the most educational, technological, or insightful place to do meaningful business. We are not selling shower curtains.

Let’s think this through – we need to conduct constructive and meaningful long-term strategy sessions together to figure out how we should be working together to then figure out how we can succeed and prosper together through collaborations to fuel our positive net revenue and fight-off the all the negative market factors – yes together!

Put down the phone, we can make this work.  First, get the people you trust and the others you want to get to know to sit down together and brainstorm ideas. Second, take the time to look beyond the short-term solution mode of operation and think about where all the different marketplaces will be in 5-7 years – I am talking about novel ideas and emerging industries.  It is not extracting oil from deeper platforms.  Third, get a determined, persistent, and tireless member of your team to force action.  Finally, build collaborations without fear – again the world needs us to work together.

“There is a caveat – we do not have time for inaction, we can’t waste each other’s time, IT has to find time to be at the table, and by the way if we don’t act now some group who may not be as talented as us will take quicker action.”

Strategic planning is time sensitive.  You must act quickly and trust each other to be decisive. Purposeful collaborations with a confident short and visionary long-term perspective which support your organizational vision, mission, meaningful work experience, and revenue always work.  Now, let’s go build a powerful collaborative strategic plan with some really cool and engaging ideas and be real progressive business thought-leaders together!