What relationships are the most important to you? Vertical or Horizontal?

What relationships create the most value for the customer, thus improve customer success? Vertical or Horizontal?

Are they the same in your organization?

You may say vertical relationships are most import to you. Vertical relationships are import for your career. They are how we report. Often are used to get other business units to interact.

You may say horizontal relationships are the most important. With horizontal relationships you connect with the team members in your business unit and others. You get stuff done and create more value with these relationships for your customers.

Of course there is the depends category. It is important to create value and drive customer success. To do this be the culture broker! A culture broker is the one that is connected within the organization. One that knows who are the power brokers in the organization. The one that knows who to contact to get stuff done and with the social capital to achieve the outcomes they seek.

How to do you become a culture broker? It is simple, talk to other teams in your org. Ask questions that show you are interested in them and what they do. Engage with them to achieve outcomes that drive customer success. I am sure your customer’s success in a companywide endeavor, so the opportunities are there to connect.

Teams with culture brokers significantly out performs teams that do not have one, according to the authors of Cross-Silo leadership HBR.com. From a leadership perspective it is important to foster culture brokers among your teams. The more culture brokers you have the better off your team. The more value you create for your customers and value created. It takes a cross-functional team to achieve success. The more rapid the team can form and achieve the outcome the better off we are.

Remember to see things through others eyes and gain that perspective. By doing this, we gain a better understanding of the whole picture.

What are your perspectives? What do I get to know about you that will improve our partnership?