Business Relationship Management — a journey of discovery
In 2017 I started joined a newly formed organisation unit to lead the Business Relationship Management team. I was handed a blueprint for the team design that a consultancy organisation had put together and was told: “some of your new team start in two weeks”.
What followed over the next three years was a journey of discovery and experimentation, trying to understand how this new team would add value to an organisation and establish its purpose.
Partway through that journey, I became involved in a community of Business Relationship Managers, which subsequently became the Strategic IT Partner Forum. As part of that group a series of forums took place and along the way, I gathered a collection of questions and topics that others were asking.
Do let me know if there are other questions or topics that you would like to hear an opinion on. One of the biggest discoveries was that there is no set way of doing things, that you need to constantly shift and evolve not just based on the development and understanding of the team but also the shifting nature of the organisation.
We tried useful things, we did things that on paper should have been valuable but in reality didn’t achieve the result, and we got things wrong and it didn’t help but they were all an opportunity to learn and in doing so we became better able to contribute to the organisation.
I’ve now left that team in the capable hands of those who joined the journey at the beginning and hopefully they’ll be able to take things to the next level and continue the evolution. If there is one thing we know there is no set definition of Business Relationship Management and there will be a constant need to evolve and change.
I look forward to continuing the discussion as I look back and perhaps through doing so offer some advice that will help with your own journey.
Until that next post, some of the best examples of the change we were able to bring about and the thinking that took place are published as blog posts and can be found here:
