Power of Partnering

It’s been a few months since I took on the role of Director of Labor Partner Development. During this time, it’s been a pleasure to meet several of you and I look forward to moving our business relationships forward.

In this new role, I am eager to apply what I’ve learned in my past positions at EMC where I looked at process structure, business development opportunities and developed unique perspectives on our partnerships, our processes and the potential to drive greater success for all concerned.

As I look across the opportunities for improvement and the challenges we are all facing in our businesses and within the industry, I believe our initial focus should be to answer two questions: “What can each of us bring to the table?” and “How can we maximize the way with which we do it?”

I am excited to begin working on answers to these questions with you. We have partners that have been with EMC since the beginning or the very early years of our growth. Together we have successfully weathered many storms and steadfastly worked together to grow our respective businesses, our standing within the industry and expectations for the future—beyond anything we originally envisioned.

For those of you who are new to partnering with EMC, I hope the same holds true when we turn and look back 15 years from now.

There are many things we will need to work on together to seize the opportunities that the market is providing. They are different today than when I first joined EMC. They require retooling, retraining and reorganizing the ways that we approach our work. Together we can do this, and we can collectively realize our goals.

The keys in my mind align with our EMC core values:

1. Always go the extra mile. For our partners, like our EMC team members, that means that I expect that when you see something, you say something. Find ways to help us make it right for the customer even when it occasionally pushes us outside the original scope of work.
2. Teamwork. For you, our partners, that means working with us to deliver industry leading results and adjusting, when needed, as seamlessly as possible in the field so that we both receive high marks from our customers and a chance to do more.
3. Continuously Improve and Drive Change. Here I challenge you to look for ways to help us improve, focusing on both your own performance as well as those things that we provide to you to support your work in the field.
4. Take Initiative. You are our eyes onsite once the project begins, so when you discover an oversight in our scope of work, I want us to view it as an opportunity to exceed customer expectations by proactively addressing the condition with the team to determine best options for our customer.

Data, process analysis and evaluation will become a significant part of what we will do to track performance and improve our collective work.

A new tiered network structure will allow us to both track and reward our premier partners and help us direct those that may be experiencing some challenges. We can then refocus efforts to drive toward needed improvements and provide opportunity for a greater share of the work to be done. More will be announced about this in the coming months.

To anyone who may think that we aren’t paying you for your opinions, you would be wrong.

We will look for your help in identifying opportunities to enhance what we are doing together to deliver for our customers. We can’t get to the best answers without your input. We are paying for a partnership to deliver on a promise. Our ability to deliver on that promise requires that we get your opinions.

I look forward to working with each of you.

Please reach out to me at jloheit@emcllc.com if you would like to set aside time to talk about our partnership.

John Loheit is EMC's Director of Labor Partner Development. In this role he oversees the Labor Partner Network and Field Quality Assurance. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Augsburg College in Minneapolis, MN.