We've Got the Power!

I recently attended an excellent alliance training class in Boston by Vantage Partners. I'll be commenting in future blog posts about several of my takeaways from the class and my fellow alliance professionals (40 strong) that attended.

My #1 takeaway? ....

We've Got the Power!

We have more power than we realize. Despite the obstacles and challenges inherent in building alliance capabilities in our organizations, despite all the things we feel we have no control over– we do have significant power in our role as “interventionists” in our organizations.

We can hone our skills as alliance professionals and learn the tools and techniques to manage conflict, negotiate based on interests versus positions, identify and manage differences to maximize mutual value of the alliance. The extent to which we build our own skills in these areas is the extent to which we can lead by showing our organizations a better way to think, a better way to make decisions, a more effective framework for managing conflict and thus, a better way to manage and optimize our alliance relationships. 

People follow competence. We can indeed change our organizations – one stakeholder at a time…

Badda bing Badda boom!

Please I beg you - don't be this guy. This is the badda bing, badda boom guy. The guy that starts calling partner prospects "because hey, we need partners!" without a thoughtful strategy.

I know the temptation to do this can be strong, especially if you work at a small company, or if you are under pressure at a larger one. But calling a partner prospect, without understaning why you are calling and why they should care, is a big mistake.

I've been there. While working for a startup, one of the founders came into my office one day and said "we have to partner with XYZ company, we need them!" When I said, "yes, but why do they need us?" he had no ready answer. I suggested we might want to wait until we thought this through before making that first call.

There are three things you must do before making that first call if you want to make a good first impression, and they are not always easy, especially #1.

1. Know your company's product strategy. This can be difficult for small companies, but I've found this to be a challenge at high tech companies of all sizes. With technology,  you can "do anything", so NIH (not invented here) mentality is often a barrier.
2. Know what's in it for the partner. This requires you to understand their business. Walk in their shoes. Understand their market pressures and aspirations. Do your homework!
3. Develop a "partnering proposition". This is critical. Your partnering proposition should articulate what it is you are proposing to do together. Since it's a strawman proposal - a starting point, you may not end up here, but please do not make the prospect figure out what you're asking to do!  Tell them. Simply. And make it as compelling as you can. "Here's what we do, here's what you do, we'd like to collaborate to deliver X and this is how it will benefit you and our mutual customers."

For more on developing a partnering proposition, see this Partnering Proposition Worksheet I developed for use in exploratory partnership discussions.

In the "friend zone"

I was having lunch with an alliance colleague a few months agoand he was diagnosing a problem with one of our alliance relationships. He said the problem we're having is that the partner was "treating us like a partner instead of like a client."

He went on to say, that if we were a client, they would be doing everything they could to understand our organizational structure, our culture, our internal capabilities, etc, in order to build a strategy for success. In other words we were relegated to "the friend zone".

It got me thinking that good alliance managers should use some of the same techniques to understand how to navigate and understand their partner's organization that good sales people use to understand the same about their customers'.

For example, the Global Alliance Manager on one of our key partnerships built an influence map of her partner's organization. For each key partner executive, her team identified their:

• Authority and influence
• Attitude toward our company (positive, neutral, negative)
• Personal style
• Relationships with other influencers

She's found this map very helpful in explaining the partner organization to internal executives and for understanding how to build support for joint initiatives.

There's a great article on influence maps on the Mind Tools website here.

Can't Get No Respect!

I often hear alliance managers complain that our roles are not valued by our organization. That company executives don't appreciate the value of alliances. That "alliances can't get any respect" in the organization.

While a lot of this grousing is somewhat justified - we have made great strides in our profession over the years, but we do have a ways to go - I do find myself challenging my colleagues on the grousing from time to time.

When a fellow alliance colleague comes to me complaining about his organization's ambivalence towards alliances, I ask a few questions:

• Do you have a formal, consistent process for qualifying, developing and executing new partners and new initiatives?
• Do you have a formal approval process for new partner ventures?
• Have all internal stakeholder roles and responsibilities been clearly defined, documented and agreed to?
• Does your Alliances Management team treat the alliance managers on the team like professionals? Is there a formal career path? Are there alliance training/professional development plans in place?
• Is your company a member of ASAP (Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals) and do you have certified alliance professionals on staff?
• Are strategic alliance teams staffed with people with the right skills and experience to do the job effectively?
• Is there formal alliance measurement and reporting in place to company executives? 
• Do your partners clearly understand what's expected of them and the partnership in order to drive value for your company?
• Do you have documented joint business plans and quarterly business reviews in place for each of your most strategic partnerships?
• Are alliances managed as a portfolio with periodic inspection on performance? Are poor performing alliances addressed or are alliance relationships like the roach motel - they check in but never check out?!  

I'm not saying that doing these things guarantees that alliances will be respected in your organization - but you will at least have done your part to earn the respect, which is "table stakes" for discussions.

We can't expect our organizations to change, if we aren't willing to do so. Change must start with us!

Captains of Change - Part V: Making Course Corrections

In the last several posts, I've been talking about the role Alliance Managers as "captains of change" in managing alliance relationships. This is Part V: Making Course Corrections.

Making course corrections on the journey goes hand in hand with Part III - Measure & Inspect.  As Alliance Managers, once we develop the joint business plan with our partner, we must "inspect what we expect"in order to ensure that our plans are on track and delivering results. You can't know what to correct if you aren't measuring progress and results!

In my company's journey to improve our alliance competencies, we created a process for consistently qualifying, approving and launching joint partner initiatives. We managed these initiatives as a portfolio and measured them against performance standards - revenue, pipeline, sales traction. We discovered that the #1 reason for failure of a partner initiative was lack of sales sponsorship.

The course correction we made was to require a sales executive sponsor for all partner initiatives. This change improved our success rates.

Any successful alliance journey should include course corrections!

Captains of Change - Part IV: Navigate Around Turbulence

Change is the raison d'etre of alliance management. As Alliance Managers, we're constantly managing change. Whenever you embark upon any project involving change, whether it's onboarding a new partner or developing a new solution with an established partner, you are going to encounter "turbulence" - forces working against change. Your job as the Captain of Change is to navigate around the turbulence.

Turbulence is inevitable because people generally abhor change. A former manager of mine talks about "organizational antibodies" that rise up against change. The metaphor is apt, since antibodies are proteins in the immune system that neutralize foreign objects in the body. Organizational antibodies always rise up to neutralize any organizational change viewed as a threat to the status quo.

Seth Godin says it best:

People who fear they will be hurt by a change speak up immediately, loudly and without regard for the odds or reality. People who will benefit from a change don't believe it (until it happens), so they sit quietly. And that's why change in an organization is difficult.

The best way to navigate around this turbulence is to get the "leading 10 percenters" on board first. These are your key influencers, stakeholders and floor leaders. They'll help you get to smoother waters by influencing the "hesitant middle". Sometimes you'll also have to proactively neutralize some of the most virulent antibodies (see my blog post on Toxic People). The most effective neutralizers tend to be facts, excellent execution and successful results.

Your role as Captain is to anticipate the turbulent seas, prepare your team and successfully navigate around (and sometimes through) the rough waters

Next post: Captains of Change - Part V: Making Course Corrections.

Captains of Change - Part III: Measure & Inspect

You must "inspect what you expect" if you want to effectively manage change. This is an important way to build trust. You have to show folks what you're measuring and why and most importantly, what decisions you will be making as a result of the data you are collecting and reporting on.

Measurement also helps you assess if you're on track or if some course corrections might be in order.

And lastly, measuring results, tracking status with visible reporting to management - helps communicate to the troops what measures are important to the leader. What's most effective is personal inspection by the leader - quarterly reviews with the executive, for example. This helps demonstrate the executive's commitment to the change.

Up next - Cheerlead success and navigate around turbulence.