The Truth and Track Shoes



I had a recent conversation with a Global Alliance Manager who manages our partnership with a company that happens to be both our biggest partner and our biggest competitor. You can imagine what her days are like.

She told me that a story had been circulating that this partner "poached" one of our people and for this reason, one of our country managers had issued a "cease and desist" order to his team to "stop all strategic work" with this partner.

Of course, this edict was issued pre-fact finding mission. Turns out that the employee had posted for the job. There was no poaching. Oh, and that we'd recently hired 5 folks in this country from this partner, so apparently we'd been doing some "poaching" of our own. Oops. Never mind. Literally a lie traveled around the world before the truth got its track shoes on.

It occurs to me that when we talk about managing co-opetition, mostly we talk about operational considerations (ensuring we have proper firewalls, managing and protecting IP, etc. etc.)..

Seems to me that the biggest hurdle, and the thing that requires the most vigilant focus, is managing the rumor mill, lowering the emotional temperature by applying liberal doses of fact and overall paranoia management. Now that is a full time job.

"Bad deals don't last"

Trust has been a big topic in the news lately - Facebook's questionable privacy policies, UK Google Earth gathering personal information from people's computer's via their unprotected wifi networks. (As if me leaving my front door open gives you the right to enter my home and steal my television set! Not.)

It got me thinking about the importance of building and maintaining trust in alliance relationships. Too many organizations don't get it when it comes to the currency of trust.

I recall working for an internet startup where the CTO and founder would brag about "screwing the partner over", as if this was something to brag about! I'd commiserate with our VP of Sales, who was fond of saying "Bad deals, don't last". He was absolutely right. You may be able to get a partner in a tight spot where they feel compelled to accept a deal in the short term that is not in their long term interests. Ultimately, however, I don't care what kind of contract you put in place, if a deal is not good for one partner, they will find a way out. One way or the other. So you may win in the short run, but you will lose in the long run. Not only with this partner, but your reputation in the partner community will suffer - and then good luck finding ANY company that will partner with you!

For more on this topic, check out this white paper by Robert Porter Lynch (Chairman Emeritus of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals) and Paul Lawrence (Professor Emeritus of Organization Behavior, Harvard Business School) - Building a System of Trust for Strategic Alliances.

I'll share more thoughts on this topic in a future blog post.