The Perfect Partner
Competition is getting intense in higher education. Never before have we seen hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into enabling non-profit, regionally accredited institutions to develop online programs, to develop unique technology-driven academic programs like our DreamDegree — jump over to one of our other videos and check out DreamDegree, it’s pretty phenomenal.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been shifted from the for-profit sector into companies that help enable non-profit regionally accredited schools get online and develop hybrid programs and technologies. So with this competition, it’s more of a people situation now than it is a technology situation or a money situation. What is going to make this work in a partnership is what we call the 3 Chords — it’s the alignment within the institution (we believe alignment trumps brand and size), that institution has to be aligned with the marketing partners that we bring to the table, and our partnership. It takes all three. A “them or us, or they did this thing wrong,” or whatever creates a bad partnership. Partnerships are built on people relationships, and people relationships are built on trust.
You can have the best technology, you can have the best location and you can have tens of millions of dollars to invest in marketing; but if the people are not aligned — if the partnerships are not aligned — it’s not going to work…it’s going to be marginal. Real success happens when the people are good partners. What makes a good partner is transparency, respect, respect of dignity, really listening and understanding what the other person is saying — I wish I could do that better with all my kids and my wife — I’m working on it. But that’s really what makes a partnership in business. Also, what I’ve learned here at the Dream Center where we’re filming today, is the heart of being a servant.
Each of our partners in SignificantSystems, I helped select because they had a heart to serve. When we come on a campus, we want to respect the faculty first. We want to serve the institution, and we hire people to work for us and they have to be willing to be servants. We believe success comes through service.