The US election campaign has provided an interesting contrast in leadership styles. One candidate is poised, prepared and calm whilst the other resembles a rampaging raccoon after a gallon of red cordial. The actions of the leader have a big impact on an organisation and you need them to be aligned to your success. You don’t want unfortunate consequences for your partnerships any more than Springfield residents need recipes for dog au vin.
There are some common myths about the role of your CEO in partnerships, so it’s important to be clear on what’s useful and what’s not. Typically, partnerships people want the CEO to be the holder of a magic address book with the home numbers of every corporate CEO in town. But even if they did have the contacts of a celebrity PR guru, would they be useful anyway?
Let’s look at the real value that a CEO can bring to a partnerships program and where it typically goes wrong.
The real value of the CEO role is not in a mythical book of contacts, it’s in setting the framework for your partnership success. Firstly, the CEO needs to set out clearly the organisation’s goals, ambitions and vision. You need them to be more than just vague platitudes or technical jargon like ‘doubling our impact’ or ‘empowering communities through creating infinite value’ (yes, that really is one NFP’s vision statement). Corporate partners need to understand where you’re going to decide if they want to come on the journey with you. If the vision and ambitions are not clear, they won’t be able to tell their audiences the point of the partnership or what they’re aiming to achieve with you. They’ll choose another non-profit with a clearer vision for the future.
The CEO plays a critical role in speaking for the organisation in different forums and importantly, being willing to do so with corporate audiences. Developing peer to peer relationships with senior corporate leaders is important in getting to decision makers and taking the partnership from a tactical, one-off campaign to a longer term proposition. Relying on relationships at the CSR, HR or junior level can be risky as they often don’t have budget authority. During the early days of COVID the CEO of Beyond Blue made personal calls to each of their corporate partners to reassure them, update them and make them feel valued. It ensure they stayed aligned to Beyond Blue and paved the way for a multi-million dollar commitment from one of their existing partners.
The most important part of the CEO’s role is to create the internal environment for partnership success. That’s means allocating the right resources, ensuring that training and development is available for partnership managers and breaking down the internal silos that can hamstring future partnerships. We often hear that it’s easier to talk to a stone cold corporate prospect than get a colleague to provide marketing support, a program report or a financial acquittal in time. Partnership managers don’t have the positional power or the time to do everything themselves. The CEO is ultimately the one who can build a culture and environment for success.
Where it goes wrong is when the CEO is disengaged, uninformed or mis-aligned with partnerships. We’ve all had the experience of the Post-It note on your desk ‘helpfully’ suggesting a corporate prospect. They’re mildly annoying, but the CEO can actually engage in conduct that is unintentionally value destroying for partnerships. Setting unrealistic expectations and KPIs is usually a great way to demotivate staff. We heard of one partnership manager asked to deliver ‘just’ 5 new partners per week. Even if she were successful, that’s 260 relationships per annum to service, develop and satisfy. That’s not relationship building, it’s like a series of unsatisfying one night stands.
CEOs are passionate about the organisation and can often talk at length about everything they want to achieve. The problem is when they dominate a corporate meeting and spend more time taking than listening. It means you don’t get the chance to ask important questions about the corporate’s needs, priorities and ambitions. We heard of one leader who joined a meeting with a large, generous corporate and remarked halfway through that they probably didn’t need the money anyway. You’ll need to provide a tight brief, a meeting plan and a time limit for the CEOs who want to lecture your corporate prospect or go off track.
We know that CEOs bring their own unique set of skills, styles and preferences to the role. Often they don’t understand how their role impacts on partnerships, so you’ll need to be clear on what you need to succeed. Most times you won’t be mopping up after they drop a clanger, but you may have to lock the cats and dogs away safely first.