DCG Blog

A Strategic Alliance is defined as “a formal relationship between two or more parties to pursue a set of agreed upon goals or to meet a critical business need.”

This has special resonance for me and my new company, Dutra Cerro Graden, because after spending over 10 years at Dutra Realty, where we rose to become the top ranked residential real estate firm in the East Bay before selling to Prudential California Realty, I never thought I would start another company. And yet here I am, having formed a relationship between myself, Alan Cerro and Landis Graden to pursue a “set of agreed upon goals” in order “to meet a critical business need.” For us, this need is defined in our Mission Statement.

We’ve now been together for almost four years and our business is flourishing in the midst of an unprecedented economic downturn.

So what has made this Strategic Alliance so successful?

One reason for our success is that we hold a shared vision to which we are deeply committed to “Create Communities of Value™.” We believe that non-profit social service agencies, cultural institutions, religious organizations, schools, cities and other “mission-based” entities form the very foundation of our society. We are convinced that we can bring real property services to these clients to help them flourish in their respective missions and, in doing so, assure that we continue to have true Communities of Value.

I am convinced that for any strategic alliance to be successful, it must create a vision and a culture that inspires people and is shared by the members of the alliance. This is true whether the alliance is between partners in a company or between multiple organizations, businesses, and agencies.

The second reason for our success is that the desire to “Create Communities of Value™” extends to the very culture of our company. Throughout my career I've found that truly successful people and companies are those that understand the importance of what I call the two "C's” - competence and conscientiousness. We believe in each other’s competence and we care about each other’s success. We don’t want to let each other down.

So, as we seek to build Strategic Alliances with other related entities such as architects, engineers and general contractors, our FIRST order of business is to ensure that they share our commitment to making our communities a better place to live. And while we are certainly cognizant of our need to meet our financial obligations – and we do - we measure success by the extent to which we succeed in our vision of “Creating Communities of Value™."