Pamela Kan is the President of Bishop-Wisecarver, a manufacturer in rotary motion products. Pamela is the second generation to lead the family business, which was founded 67 years ago. Today, Pamela speaks about her personal experience with developing strategic partners — what works, and what doesn’t work!

Let’s first focus on the things that didn’t work. We often learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. Pamela tries to develop a culture of fail fast, but unfortunately with this particular example, it took a little longer to fail, and her company ended up burning some money because of it.

Pamela partnered with a competitor in her industry to do a joint development on a product. Both companies were very well aligned on management and everything seemed to be going fine. Pamela already had a design for the product and even ordered the necessary parts to get this product on its way.

But by the end of it all, the entire project ended up failing, and the reason why came down to a number of things. First and foremost, the parent company was outside the United States and even though the C-suite executives and management were all on the same page, it turns out that the parent company did not approve of the joint venture. Biggest lesson there was that you have to be sure that the people you’re talking to have decision-making power.

Another reason why the joint venture failed is that both companies had different cultural values, both on a company and country culture perspective. This was one of the main reasons why the parent company did not wish to continue their venture further.

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Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It....And Why the Rest Don't, is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, on how the fastest growing companies succeed, where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, with Humanisteq Coaching, and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches.

We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right, so that they can Scale Up successfully, and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits).

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