May 9, 2024 | By David M. Wagner

During a recent roundtable about strategy, an nonprofit director asked a great question:

“How do you build a plan when your success depends on an outside partner?”

The truth is, we often have to rely on others for our plans to work. You can accomplish much more with the added capacity of working with partners.

The challenge, though, is that your partners’ actions are beyond your immediate control. You need their resources, help, or at least their cooperation for your plans to work.

Planning can be hard enough without partners. How do you account for relying on what’s not under your control?

Managing Dependencies

My advice: identify and track every external dependency.

Just as you would list out all the steps of a typical plan, make note of everything you need your partners to do or provide.

And then give those dependencies some extra attention.

In your own organization, you might be able to get away with listing tasks in a shorthand everyone understands, like “update donor list.”

But when an outside partner is involved, it helps to be much more explicit. Clarify (read: write down!) your expectations and review them together with partners to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Employ Risk Management

When that’s done, give those dependencies some extra, extra attention – by managing them as risks.

As in, “If partner X doesn’t come through with Y by Z date, our plans are pretty much hosed.” (Feel free to be more articulate.)

Even when we trust our partners – and of course we trust them, or else, why would we partner with them? – there’s always a chance that something outside your control, or even theirs, will get in the way.

Here are some risk management approaches adapted to situations where your plans depend on someone else:

• Ask for key decisions and deliverables as early as possible. If something is not going to work out with your partnership, you want to know as early as you can. That gives you time to form alternate plans, or even “cut bait” before you invest more time and resources. I call these tripwires – early warnings that something is awry.

• Build in contingencies. Use contingencies to minimize the impact of partners showing up late, or over budget, or not at all. Meaning: build extra time, extra budget reserves, and/or backup options into your plans.

• Plan for extra coordination. External partnerships often benefit from more frequent communication (such as brief, regular meetings). Meeting regularly helps keep information flowing and resolve discrepancies in expectations before they balloon into bigger problems.

Partnerships are an important part of having impact beyond your in-house capacity. They also introduce risks. Use careful planning to ensure that working with a partner improves, rather than threatens, your chances of success.

Crafting risk-aware plans is all part of making a strategy that matters. Set a free consult to set your strategy up for success.