Our Blog – Partnering

Alliance Stakeholder Alignment

Posted Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 07:00 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

Do you have champions in your alliance? or do you have snipers and hostages? 

When I teach alliance skills mastery workshops, I often ask how much time managers spend on internal alignment.  That is winning the hearts and minds of the internal alliance stakeholders to gain their buy-in and cooperation.  I hear answers from 30% to sometimes a frustrated 100%.  Most commonly, I hear on the order of 70% of an alliance managers day is spent in gaining and maintaining alignment within the company to the goals and objectives of an alliance and solciting support from the stakeholders to execute on alliance projects.  

That is a lot of time!  Time that could be spent on more productive activities that create value; activities that create innovative products or generate revenue!  

When an organization is not internally aligned, there is friction in the operations.  Friction is costly! Just ask any mechanical engineer.  It wears people down, causes operations to grind to a halt.  Then it takes an inordinate amount of energy to start the process up again.  Even in a well managed alliance, energy has to be continually injected to keep operations going forward to overcome friction. 

There's got to be a better way!  No promising miracles, but here is a tool that will help you understand where those points of friction are and to help you oil the machine.

By positionng alliance stakeholders on this matrix, you will begin to see the work cut out for you.  On the X axis is commitment. Think of this in terms of how these stakeholders perceive the value of the alliance. Do they believe it is a positive strategy for the company? 

On the Y axis is accountability. What do these people have at stake in the success of the partnership? Do they have a bonus on the line, a quarterly objective, personal reputation, a positive review from their manager?

You will be able to anticipate the behaviors and attiftudes of the stakeholders by where they fall in the matrix.  These quadrants are colorfully named, but the names imply some of the behaviors you should expect. Understanding the motivations of stakeholders by commitment and accountability will enable you to develop strategies and tactics to address behavior and attitudes.

Champions are highly committed and highly accountable.  What behaviors would you expect from your champions?  You would expect them to evangelize the value of the partnership to others and to go the extra mile to meet their commitments. If you are the alliance manager, you should be in this quadrant! and so should your executive sponsor.

Cheerleaders are true believers, but are not accountable for the success of the alliance.  They may have other priorities so they may not be as dependable as those who are accountable. But they are people you want on your team and people you might recruit nto the Champion quadrant by giving them a stake in successful outcomes. 

Hostages aren't committed to the partnership. They would rather be working on something else, but since they are accountable in some way, they feel stuck.  They will do the bare minimum but no more. 

Snipers. Who doesn't have a few of these.  Snipers may actually have an incentive see an alliance fail. Their goals and accountabilities might be in direct conflict. Address these folks early or they will spread discontent. 

I have been invited to join the Asian Collaborative Business Relationship Community  for a free webinar to discuss alliance stakeholder alignment. We will be discussing how to use this tool to help grease the machine as you launch an alliance and how to maintain alignment through on going operations. If you are interested in learning more please join us on June 21.  Register here.

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The Nature of Trust

Posted Saturday, February 6, 2010 at 02:28 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

I did a study three years ago of partner health across 14 strategic alliances and about ~400 respondents and found something very interesting about the nature of trust in alliances. We did a correlation of heath attributes against overall partner health. We found that when 'trust' was present it...

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Tags: Alliance Management Best Practices, Alliance Strategy

Social Media and Partnering: What's working?

Posted Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 09:14 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Findings from a Survey Conducted by Phoenix Consulting GroupOf the 20 partner managers we interviewed, most were realizing productive benefits from the use of social media. Benefits were described in terms of strengthening relationships versus the hard metrics of generating...

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Tags: social media benefits, partner strategy, enhancing collaboration, partner ecosystem

How are Partner Managers using Social Media?

Posted Tuesday, August 25, 2009 at 10:19 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Findings from a Survey Conducted by Phoenix Consulting GroupWe asked twenty partner managers What is social media?

By far the most common response was Good Question! After a thoughtful pause, we heard social media were tools that enabled users to communicate, to...

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Tags: Social Media, Partnering, Partner Ecosystem, Collaboration

Serving our Customers thru better Partnering: Doing More with Less

Posted Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 06:25 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Certainly in this economy doing more with less is an imperative we all face. It is also the fundamental premise of partnering and in these times Partner Managers are pressed even harder to do even more with even less. A few weeks ago I was asked to moderate a gathering of senior alliance executives...

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Tags: customer service, resource management, optimization

The Power of Green Alliances

Posted Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 02:32 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Attended an ASAP Green breakfast this morning and it was certainly eye opening even if the coffee arrived late.

Hal LaFlash, Dir Emerging Clean Technology Policyfrom PG&E -that's Pacific Gas and Electric for the non-Californians - spoke on the many alliances that PG&E has been...

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Tags: power, green, alliances

Alliance Strategy in Challenging Times: Rebalancing the Portfolio

Posted Monday, December 15, 2008 at 10:18 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Is it time to reevaluate your alliance investment? Do you have the right partners to weather the economic climate?

Are you retaining the right partners to ensure you have a strategic advantage when the thaw comes?

Regular portfolio rebalancing is a best practice even in good times...

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Tags: alliance, strategy, challenging, times, rebalancing, portfolio

Alliance Strategy Realignment: Finding Opportunity in Economic Disruption

Posted Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 09:44 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Have you rethought your alliance strategy in terms of what new opportunities lie ahead? Are you prepared to find the opportunity in disruption? We can assume that business as usual is not going to work in today's volatile economic climate because business has become unusual. Yet, disruptive...

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Tags: strategy, realignment, opportunity

Secret #2 Build, Build or Partner

Posted Sunday, December 2, 2007 at 09:14 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

Does your organization have a clear discipline in determining which strategy to pursue to achieve an objective? Build? Buy? or Partner?

If you answered, NO - you are in the majority. Unfortunately. A few organizations do, however, and one Proctor & Gamble has had excellent results...

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Tags: partnering, build

Where should alliances report in the organization?

Posted Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 07:16 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

This is a question I am frequently asked and one for continual debate. As far as I know there is very little published work on this topic, only fleeting references on the challenge. My opinion: there is no perfect answer but the best answer relates to what are you trying optimize?

Functional...

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Tags: partnering, reporting

Secret #1 Winners Collaborate

Posted Tuesday, September 11, 2007 at 07:49 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

In the Eight Secrets webcast, we reviewed some research data indicating that higher performing companies were extensive collaborators.

Here I'd like to share some thoughts behind a fundamental change in attitude towards collaboration and partnering that I've seen in past few years. Some...

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Tags: partnering, collaboration

Eight Secrets Update

Posted Sunday, August 19, 2007 at 06:36 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

With great relief, I can report the "Eight Secrets" webcast went well. The producer and technical staff at AMA made it easy. The producer commented it was well attended and one of the best received webcasts they have done in terms of the feedback survey results. Whew! Here is one of the viewer...

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Tags: partnering, webcast

Pheathers Phlying

Posted Saturday, August 11, 2007 at 10:29 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

Launching a blog for Phoenix Consulting Group in the midst of Pottermania has been a hoot, to steal a phrase from Hedwig. Looking for a blog name, I investigated everything Phoenix and found everything Harry Potter. Trying to get clever, I tried the current spelling Phoenix Pheathers which...

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Tags: blog, business development, interation, collaboration