Book excerpt: A practical guide for building and maintaining high performance business relationships Every business sinks or swims on the quality of its relationships and alliances, whether they are between management and staff, departments, subsidiaries, partners, suppliers, or customers. It's no wonder then that building and maintaining high performance relationships has emerged as one of the hottest topics in today's hypercompetitive, global business environment. This indispensable guide will help you to understand what high performance relationships are and how they work. Written by a distinguished pioneer in the field, it explains what a high performance business culture populated by a fully engaged workforce looks like. It describes simple, proven strategies and techniques for implementing and sustaining high performance relationships, both internally, within your organizations, and externally. And, it details the many benefits that await business organizations of any size that place greater emphasis on relationship performance management. Offers simple and effective methods for building successful business and organizational relationships Concise and easy to read, this book provides a common language and practice for high performance relationship management and critical change management Arms you with an array of tested-in-the-trenches tools for building robust and sustainable high performance business relationships