Sunday, February 20, 2011

Best Practice Makes Perfect?

There was a recent thread on the ASAP (Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals) LinkedIn group about best practices. Here are my thoughts on "best practices in applying best practices"!







  • Tailor to the culture of your company. Company culture provides the "current" for implementing best practices. What works at one company, may not work at yours and vice versa. Be sure to think about cultural dynamics when applying best practices and adjust accordingly.
  • Use your tailored best practices to develop your alliances playbook. You need some kind of consistent framework for qualifying, developing and executing partner initiatives. The playbook defines how you "get alliances work done around here".
  • Combine your best practices playbook with professional development. A great playbook in the hands of unskilled alliance managers will not get you very far. Build a training and professional development plan for the alliances team to help them to understand why these are best practices and how to apply them.
  • Build in flexibility. Once size does not fit all alliances. Mike Leonetti, Chairman Emeritus of ASAP, used to say "when you've seen one alliance, you've seen one alliance". 
  • Align measurement and comp. Beware the law of unintended consequences. Make sure that your teams are properly incented and that you are measuring what you expect. 

What say you?

No comments:

Post a Comment