When Partnership Requires Two Movements
Photo by Thomas Bormans
You're sitting with your leadership team. You want to be true partners with clients—co-creating solutions, navigating complexity together, creating meaningful impact.
You've developed a vision, set up a program, trained people in partnership skills, and designed new propositions. The plan is clear, the intentions are good, and the commitment is there.
Six months later, you notice something. Many relationships remain stuck in advisory mode. Professionals work hard, systems run smoothly. But that co-creation you were looking for... It's emerging differently than you expected.
What We Consistently Notice
An insurance company sought to understand the needs of restaurant owners. They conducted customer research and facilitated workshops. Everything is carefully prepared.
Until someone suggested, "Let's just work behind the bar."
What happened there changed everything. Restaurant owners spend more on toilet paper than on insurance. When a window breaks, they don't want a claims expert—they want a new window immediately because they need to open it that same day.
The breakthrough: Insurers can help entrepreneurs with their daily challenges by leveraging their knowledge, network, and service organization more broadly.
But notice something. Two things happened simultaneously.
Externally, the relationship with clients changed. From "we insure your business" to "we understand your reality and help you navigate it."
Internally, professionals had to change from experts offering solutions to people who genuinely want to understand what's happening. Systems had to make space for different conversations, for time behind that bar, for discovery instead of efficiency.
Both movements. Together.
The Dual Challenge
We see this pattern regularly. Service evolution requires a specific dual challenge.
Look at what creates tension. A program launches, and professionals receive training in consultative selling, value propositions, and partnership skills. Good, practical, professionally designed.
At the same time, systems stay focused on efficiency. Billable hours remain the primary metric. Utilization gets measured and expected. Schedules are full, calendars packed tight.
Professionals feel pulled in different directions. They want to work differently. The pressure from targets continues. Partnership thinking meets transactional metrics.
Here's what this reveals: external evolution asks for internal change that extends beyond training. It invites rethinking how you value work, what you measure, how you create time, and what you reward. It opens space for a culture shift from individual performance to collective learning.
Navigation, Not Implementation
Service evolution is the navigation of a transition where the path unfolds as you go. You establish partnerships with clients, working closely alongside them. You develop internal capability as you see what's needed externally.
This evolution invites different capabilities from leaders and professionals:
Sensemaking—regularly pausing to ask: what's actually happening? What's truly emerging here?
Experimenting—starting small, trying, learning, adapting. With one client, one team exploring: what happens when we do this differently?
Letting go—accepting that what previously brought success can evolve into something more profound. Professionals finding comfort with discovery. Systems making space for different values.
Both-and thinking—holding today and tomorrow simultaneously. Efficiency and innovation together. External and internal as partners. Navigating the creative tension.
Where Do You Start?
Start small and concrete, in both dimensions simultaneously.
Choose one client relationship that has potential and where you feel a sense of trust. Choose one team that's curious and wants to experiment with working differently. Give them explicit space—time, safety, commitment—to explore with that client: what becomes possible when we do this differently?
And create parallel internal space for regular reflection: what are we discovering about how partnerships emerge in our context? What works surprisingly well and why? What proves more difficult than expected, and what do we need for that?
Both movements. Allowing them to develop together. Noticing what emerges while staying curious about what's unfolding.
The Question For You
Are you currently treating service evolution as an implementation project you can plan and roll out? Or as navigating a dual challenge where you give both dimensions space to develop together?
Do you recognize this pattern in your situation—perhaps focusing on one dimension while the other stagnates?
Some organizations navigate this on their own with the capabilities they have. Other organizations discover along the way that we value guidance, someone who walks alongside us as we navigate both dimensions.
The question is: what fits for you, right now, in your context?