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.

Are you a "Straight A" student?

I attended a recent webinar hosted by Vantage Partners entitled "Managing Difficult Alliance Conversations".

Stu Kliman was the speaker and he encouraged alliance managers to move from "positional bargaining", where the role of the alliance manager is to claim maximum value from a fixed pie - to "joint problem solving", where the role of the alliance manager is to work together to create and distribute value.

Sound good in theory, why is this so difficult to do in practice?

The ladder of inference
Stu talked about the concept of "partisan perceptions". We each form perceptions based on the data we access (or that we choose to filter). Imagine you have a ladder and you sit it in a pool of data. You then "move up the ladder" by forming conclusions and a point of view based on where you placed your ladder. Imagine that your partner is doing the same thing. Two parties, two different ladders, two different perspectives on the seemingly same situation.

Psychological studies have shown that we each have an operating principle that partisan perceptions exist in "other people", but not in us!

Alliance management is all about managing differences and these differences contribute greatly to partisan perceptions. For example, you partner with a company that that has complementary skills or products. Because of differences in your cultures and business models, they see you as slow and bureaucratic, you see them as arrogant and imprudent. Partisan differences abound.

The best way to break this logjam is to make sure that you are striking a balance between advocacy and intimacy in your alliance conversations.

Advocacy vs. intimacy
Advocacy involves advocating for your position. It's a completely self-centered perspective. Intimacy involves "learning through dialog" - assuming that you are not in possession of all the facts, and engaging in an open conversation with your partner to understand their perspective.

Learning through dialog requires an authentic, genuine curiosity to understand the partner's ladder of inference. You have to climb down from your ladder, see where your partner has planted his ladder, and climb up his ladder of inference to truly understand things from his perspective.

Stu invited us to think about our last difficult alliance conversation and then to "script" the conversation by writing down the dialog (what we said, what they said). He asked us to put an "A" next to statements that we made that were all about advocacy and an "I" next to statements that were about intimacy. Not surprisingly most of us had a lot of "A's" on our paper!

Don't be a "Straight A" student!
When parties get stuck in alliance discussions, it's usually because they were "straight A students" solely focused on advocacy!

Next time you have to have a difficult alliance conversation, make sure you "check your ladder". This is one of the few times in your life when you want to avoid being a straight A student.

Stu indicated that the recording of the webinar should be on their website shortly. You can check for it on Vantage Partner's website.

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...

Are you serious?

How do you know whether or not your dealing with a partner that takes partnering seriously?

6 signs that the company is serious about partnering:

1. They staff their alliance organization with true alliance professionals. I worked for an exec at IBM who was serious about hiring the best and brightest (and firing those who weren't). He didn't want "Statue of Liberty people" - ('send me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses') on his team.  It was his slang for the mediocre. Is your partner's alliance organization staffed with alliance professionals who are passionate about alliance formation and execution? 
2. They provide professional development and training to their alliance staff. See 1.
3. They have a mature and sophisticated sales organization with "partner mindset" A company that's serious about partnering hires salespeople with experience collaborating with partners to identify new opportunities and then incents them appropriately. 
4. Their CEO walks the walk. Alliance strategy should be part and parcel of the business strategy. The CEO should not only talk about the importance of alliances at internal company meetings, but also to customers, and the press and analyst communities. 
5. They've got a full time alliance executive. Or if it's a relatively small company, a designated exec with alliance responsibility. I think that when your company gets to a certain size you need a DEDICATED alliance executive. If the company is serious about alliances, and they've built a portfolio of partners and planning on building more, there really should be an exec that's focused on alliance strategy and execution. Doing it right is not a part-time pursuit.
6. They inspect what they expect. Companies that are serious about generating results from their alliances are serious about measuring and managing alliances. They establish alliance business plans with goals and objectives. They manage their alliances portfolio against a set of performance criteria. If the company is inspecting what they expect as it relates to alliances, they're likely serious about it.

What say you?

Channel Managers vs. Strategic Alliance Managers

Recently there was a discussion thread on the ASAP (Association of Strategic Alliances) LinkedIn Group about the differences between folks who manage channel partners vs. folks who manage alliances. In my experience, Alliance Managers that are successful managing channel/reseller partnerships (typically called Business Development Managers) generally have a sales background. Channel relationships, by design, are more tactical relationships. The basic job here is blocking and tackling, managing the sales cycle, tracking pipeline, managing sales conflicts etc.

Alliance Managers covering strategic relationships, where joint collaboration and innovation are the raison d'etre of the alliance, need a different skill set. The ability to think strategically, high emotional intelligence, and an entrepreneurial mindset, are all key attributes of successful strategic alliance managers.


Both jobs require people with fundamental sales skills, it's really a question of degree. I believe Channel Managers need to have stronger skills in this area, but Strategic Alliance Managers also must have very good sales skills, and not just because of the amount of internal selling the job entails! SAMs need to have a clear understanding of the selling process and sales engagement process in order to successfully build and execute initiatives with the Partner. At IBM we used to say "nothing happens until you sell something" - all the great strategy work in the world is meaningless unless it can be translated into a selling proposition that two sales teams can assimilate and sell!! 


- Donna Peek

The Wonderful World of Disney

I heard Michael Eisner (former CEO of Disney) interviewed on the Diane Rehm show on NPR today talking about his new book – “Working Together: Why Great Partnerships Succeed”. The book is about business partnerships on a personal level (ie. Warren Buffet’s partnership with his #2, Eisner’s partnership with his #2, etc. etc.), but from what he described, it would have applicability to partnerships between companies.

He has high regard for Frank Wells, former President of Disney, and attributes Disney's success to their 10 year business partnership. (Frank Wells died tragically in a helicopter accident in 1994).

It was an interesting interview of a man that is either viewed as an icon or pariah depending on your perspective. It got me thinking about the recent Mark Hurd/HP/Oracle high drama. Hurd's departure from HP and the ensuing escalating rhetoric from both HP and Oracle executives, has caused a serious rift in their longstanding alliance relationship. As a result, both SAP and IBM are swooping in for the kill, both with PR and sales campaigns targeting Oracle-Sun and HP customers. This debacle is a perfect example of how a strategic alliance can go from asset to liability in 60 seconds. Ellison and Hurd have a long standing friendship (they play tennis together).. It will be interesting to see if that personal friendship will allow them to forge a successful business partnership, like the ones Eisner profiles in his book... Might not have a Disney ending..


- Donna Peek

More on Trust - How do alliance managers build trust?

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!