August 17, 2008
Around the World, Everybody’s Got an Agenda (Just Like In the USA)
Posted by Kevin | Print This Article
Good workshop today on “International Partnerships” from the CEO of the Society of Petroleum Engineers assisted by the manager of the association’s Dubai office. Primarily focused on case studies of SPE’s activities co-presenting conferences and events on various continents. I attended and took note because we may be looking at some international partnerships down the road. A few key points:
- Choose partners wisely. You need to know their real motivation, their real agenda — and as one audience member noted, you can’t just come out and ask them.
- Of course, in some parts of the world, you may not have a choice — in order to access the nation and the appropriate market, you’re going to have to use a particular partner (either because the government wants it that way or because the organization has a lock in some other way)
- Know your exit strategy and make sure you have a way to get out of the partnership should you need to. SPE CEO used example of one agreement they have that is only for three events, so to continue, agreement will need to be renegotiated.
- Make sure management responsibilities are clearly define and allocated — shared responsibilities difficult if impossible to make work.
- In agreement, spell out clear performance benchmarks and tie them to revenue sharing — for example, if three groups partner on an event, make sure they are each responsible for 1/3 programming to ensure 1/3 share of any surplus.
Interesting that more than half of SPE’s board is from outside the US but they are still sometimes perceived as a US organization.
Finally, speaker got a good laugh from the audience with the line, “We may be not-for-profit, but we’re also not-for-loss.”
Category :
Leadership | Management
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