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Published September 5, 2014

According to today’s Wall Street Journal, Amazon and the US Postal Service are testing a new delivery service for groceries including meat, produce etc. They already partner on Sunday deliveries and are expanding their collaboration efforts to see if this new model can be successful. What a combination of innovation and collaboration! Win-lose partnership thinking (beating your suppliers down on price with no thought to creating gains for them as well) is no longer successful. Instead, think about how to make collaboration yield 1 + 1 = 21.

One tip to implement this week: Do you view your suppliers, customers and other partners as true partners? How about your employees? For example, do you search for ways to help your customer reduce costs regardless of its impact on you? You should! If everyone started thinking about how to turn 1 + 1 = 21, we’d have exponentially more successful businesses. Try looking at it from the other person’s point of view? What would benefit them? What if your approach started with this perspective? I guarantee benefits to you will follow.