As I've mentioned on previous blog posts, building trust is critical to forming and maintaining positive alliance relationships. In this post, I'll describe a few techniques I use to build trust with my partner.
Do my homework!
Before that very first meeting or conference call, I do my homework. I learn everything I can about the partner and think through the partnering possibilities: What are their issues and challenges? What is their company culture? How are they viewed in the market? What are they afraid of? What can we do for them? What can they help us with? What kind of partnering proposition makes sense?
When I come to that first meeting prepared, the partner trusts that I'm a professional and I'm taking these discussions seriously.
Document goals and objectives
As the discussions progress, I make sure that I get joint agreement on the 3-way value proposition - (what's in it for them? what's in it for my company? what's in it for the customer?)... so that we are all anchored in what we're trying to accomplish. I find this very useful in keeping us on the same page and focused in our discussions. As we go through the contract negotiation process and beyond, I work with the partner on developing the joint business plan, where we document our mutual goals and objectives. Knowing where we're going, and working together to get there, really helps to build trust.
Set expectations early and often
I lay out the internal decision making process for the partner. Here's who we'll have to get involved, here's the business case we'll have to make, here's who has to say yes, etc etc., so that they know the lay of the land and there are no surprises. As Seth Godin, best selling author and marketing guru says, 'Someone needs to say, "here's how we do things around here," and then they they have to tell the truth. '
Get the executive sponsors together
Just as it's important for me to build a good working relationship with my counterpart, I try to find ways to facilitate relationship building between the two executive sponsors (mine and the partner's). It's much easier for sponsors to work together to resolve disputes and work through intractable obstacles to success when they know and trust each other.
Build the governance plan = > communications plan
The scope and complexity of the determines how formal the governance plan needs to be, but at a minimum, I make sure that we set expectations regarding the formal and informal communications plan and that we understand the process for dealing with disputes. Effective communications at all levels are the best tool we have as alliance managers to build and maintain trust.
As an Alliance Manager, I play a key role in building a framework for trust in the alliance relationship!
Donna, I fully agree and would like to propose one step further: what drives discussions so often on a very different route from the one you describe here, damaging or destroying trust?
ReplyDeleteMy own, partial answer is that the single most frequent point where things go astray is your "Set expectactions early and often".
Negotiating teams would approach each other with a burden of implicit expectations of each other that are well founded in other cases and still just irrelevant to the culture of this one particular other organization they happen to be talking with this time.
This is so frequent in my experienct that I will go as far as saying that unearthing, expliciting then adjusting these implicit expectations is the core business of an alliance manager.
What do you think?
What other factors do you see often preventing trust building?
Donna,
ReplyDeleteGreat list of essential components to building trust. Here is some food for thought from a recent Alliance Manager meeting I attended:
Trust must be developed and managed inside your own walls as well. You are often a change agent. Change is never 'good' to people who must change along with the 'big change'. So something that was brought forward was the fact that alliance managers must explain and live the PURPOSE of the alliance and the change that is requested.
If we reflect on the purpose of the alliance and what the impact is on each of the stakeholders in the alliance, than we can better set expectations and manage them on an ongoing basis.
@Joost, you are absolutely right about the importance of building trust INTERNALLY. Sometimes, depending on the politics and culture of our organization and how alliances are viewed by stakeholders, building internal trust can be a bigger hurdle than building it externally!
ReplyDelete@Gianluca, so true about the challenges of building trust across cultures.. Since trust requires that both parties be "on the same page" with regards to expectations (challenging enough sometimes between parties from the same culture!), the challenge is exacerbated when you are managing alliances across cultures. That's why there's no substitute for getting parties together face to face. I know what a challenge that is in our global roles, but I've seen what quantum leaps can be achieved in building trust after getting key stakeholders together face to face. Particularly true for executive sponsors across both companies...