How can you tell if an alliance will succeed?

I saw this question posed on the ASAP (Association of Strategic Alliances Professionals) LinkedIn group, and it generated quite an active discussion!

With alliance success rates hovering at at less than 50%, it's a good question to contemplate. How can we as alliance managers identify predictive behaviors or dynamics that might be clear indicators that a potential new alliance will fail (or that an existing alliance is headed for trouble)?

In the book "Getting Partnering Right" by Rackham, Friedman and Ruff, the authors did extensive research in order to answer the question - "what makes partnerships successful?" They found that in successful partnerships, there were always three consistent elements:  Vision, Impact and Intimacy.

If even one of the three elements is missing, the alliance will ultimately fail, or fall well short of expectations. This book was published way back in 1994, and yet as I look back on the alliances I've either managed or observed over the years, for every one that failed, I was always able to identify the missing element(s) that were at the root of the failure.

Something to think about if you're managing an existing alliance or embarking upon a new one. I've talked about trust in previous blog posts. A few thoughts about Shared Vision and Market Impact in upcoming blog posts..

Cheers...