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Michael Anderson: It’s really common to have folks—oftentimes it’s the two EDs or CEOs who had the first conversation that sparked an idea, and they wrote it all out on a back of a napkin at a conference that they were at together, and they’re far, far along. And that’s oftentimes when we meet folks, and some of our first questions are: Where’s your board? Where’s your staff? Who’s had what conversations with whom? And so, this is a reminder to, even when we have to move quickly—we’ll talk more about what perceptions around urgency look like in partnership processes—how important it is to have a road map that people, that folks involved in the process can follow.

“Write your hypothesis first….Design due diligence and negotiation all aimed at that hypothesis.”

We also always start first with vision. Whether this is a partnership borne out of opportunity, out of challenge or crisis—what is it that we’re trying to accomplish together that we can’t accomplish separately as independent or individual actors? So sometimes this looks like writing. I think about this as write your hypothesis first. Where are we trying to go? And then we can design due diligence and negotiation all aimed at that hypothesis. And this is an important step for collaborative conversation.

That example of the two EDs or CEOs on the back of a napkin at a conference, it’s so real. Probably could estimate a really high percentage of times that we meet folks where that’s where they’re at in a partnership process. And that vision must be shared. So there’s a real value in having this be a collaborative conversation, so there’s a critical mass of folks who see it, who can say, “Oh, there’s a ‘there’ there. Let’s dig into a process together, and we know what we’re aimed at, and we know we’re going to hold that in the center of our mind and at the center of the table through the rest of our process.”