Alliance
Governance; Embrace the Diversity
By Ed Rigsbee, CSP
(525 words)
I like to call alliance success,
“Partnering for Profits.” Unfortunately, a frequent alliance success
pitfall is attempting to make your partner in your image—do things the
way you do, think the way you think, and follow the same methodology.
While it may appear in the short-term, to ease the rocky road of alliance
governance, what it really does is minimize the value your partner
delivers in the alliance relationship. What it was that attracted you to
your alliance partner in the first place were their core competencies and
the belief that together, value added synergies would be created and
deliver benefit to both; and now you want them to change? How much sense
does that make?
First
the Process of Working Together
When you set up your alliance expectations
in your alliance agreement, the first success should be successful
organizational alliance integration—a strategy to collaborate in
developing a cooperative process with which both organizations can
successfully implement and integrate into their current processes and
methodology. First you have to successfully cooperate and collaborate
before you can implement the actual stated alliance function.
Cultural,
Strategic, and Operational Fit
For
any alliance to be successful there is the need for a reasonable cultural,
strategic, and operational fit. However, there is not a need for exact
cultural, strategic, and operational duplication. The cultural fit is
about how compatible the management teams and corporate cultures overlap.
The important question is can they successfully work together? The
strategic fit is determining how well aligned are the objectives of the
participating partners. Opposing corporate strategies can greatly
handicap, even a well implemented alliance. Operational fit is the tricky
one. How complementary are the business models, processes, and
methodology? Notice I stated aligned, and not, the same? With alignment
there can be differences, yet cooperation and collaboration.
Partner Due Diligence
I truly believe that due diligence is the
“Achilles heal” for most organizations in the alliance development
process. During this very important alliance development step, you really
do need to be honest with yourself and your potential partner(s) as to
your partnering expectations, your own capabilities, and the partner
capabilities you seek. For years I have been saying, “People do not
change after marriage.” What I mean by this in the partnering arena is
the, all too frequent, misguided belief that one’s partner will get
better after the alliance is implemented. How wrong can a person,
committee, or organization be? Pick the correct alliance partner from the
beginning. Trying to change them after is a fool’s errand.
New
Alliance
Tools for Smaller Organizations
When I first started writing about alliance
development, many of the tools were financially only available to the
larger corporations. However, with the preponderance of today’s social
networking capabilities, many savvy smaller companies are using Facebook
and Linkedin for alliance success, especially in the areas of governance
and implementation capabilities. As the social networking sites are now
allowing greater control over privacy, they become even better alliance
tools for smaller business alliance success. You will find that with a
small amount of creativity, social networking sites can truly be a boon to
alliance governance, implementation, and success.
Copyright
© 2010 Ed Rigsbee
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Ed
Rigsbee, Certified Speaking Professional, travels internationally to
deliver keynote presentations and workshops on effective and profitable alliance
and partnering relationships. In addition to serving as the president of Rigsbee Research
Consulting Group, Ed also serves as the CEO and Executive Director of a (501 c
3) public, non-profit
charity. Ed has authored three books and over 1,500 articles to help organizations to take full advantage of their potential.
While Ed has been fumbling, bumbling, and stumbling his way through the
organizational mazes of for-profits and non-profits for over four decades,
he has been an observer, researcher, and
teacher; helping organizations of all sizes to build successful internal
and external collaborative relationships. Contact
Ed, get additional (no charge) resources, or to view Ed’s videos &
blogs, please visit www.Rigsbee.com
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