I was at a gathering of Alliance Managers in Chicago last week. During the discussion, someone referred to Secretary of State Mrs. Clinton’s book titled “It takes a village”. In this case, the reference was that getting alliances to be successful requires getting the entire organization to recognize what it takes and to behave accordingly.
That is a big job!
That is a job that could take years……..
How do you even define what is different in behaving as a ‘good partner’?
Here are two thoughts that I plan to expand on in future articles.
Partnering requires purpose. Having a relationship that is intended to have a mutually beneficial goal, demands behavior that is purposeful. No one is being served by ‘nice behavior’ that overlooks flaws and missed targets. Obviously, purposeful behavior includes all variants of interaction, but in a tactful, diplomatic manner. After all, you do want to have a long term relationship together. That this is indeed possible demonstrates the alliance of firms in the Dutch VOC “Verenigde Oost-Indie Compagnie’: This purpose-driven alliance lasted for 200 years! (thanks to Peter Simoons for reminding me of that fact from our shared Dutch history)
Partnering involves understanding and managing conflict. OK, most business have implemented some form of conflict management training over the past decade or so. But what is the significance in terms of partnering activities? You are investing a lot of resources in partnering, some of you after long and hard resistance against something that is very hard to measure for results. Outright financial resources, employees time and maybe other types of tangible commitments.
So say that the project you and your partner(s) had originally planned turns out not to pay off. Are you going to engage in fingerpointing and as a result of that will you declare the partnership ‘over’? Or do you have the maturity in place to recognize that project, product and service ideas may turn out to be flawed, regardless of the health of the relationship?
What you must be able to do is manage the resulting conflict and recognize it for what it is: a learning opportunity that is the actual ROI of the efforts to invested in this partnership! A mature partnering organization is able to distinguish between the health of the collaboration and the health of the project that is the subject of the collaboration. You must be able to reflect on the activity together as partners and at the very least recognize the failures and their root causes.
Sometimes, initial metrics are not expressed in financial reward. Rather, measuring the strength of the relationship as a result of navigating through adverse conditions is the true pay off for an organization that understands: partnering mentality is different from ‘business as usual’. That is a process of change that must be traveled with purpose. Alliance Managers are by their nature and experience perfectly suited to your company’s purposeful change agents. Use them for what they naturally do best and trust their work, even though the payoff is not (always) immediate.
Joost
