Only 53% of alliances succeed, what is it that these companies do differently than the 47% that fail? In short, successful alliances are built on three cornerstones: methodology, people, and experience.
A methodology can be seen both as a roadmap and as a toolbox. A roadmap in the sense that it will guide you in the journey of alliance creation from start to finish. A carpenter’s toolbox contains several tools like a hammer and a saw; an alliance methodology will contain tools and templates to increase the chance of success.
Last week I gave you 3 tips on improving communication. When we look at the alliance methodology, communication comes back as one of the many tools in the alliance toolbox.
One of the responses I received to last week’s newsletter was from Hans Terhurne with the tip to visualize communication. An obvious tip for Hans as he is a visual thinker and his profession is to help his customers to create a clear visualization of their business themes. He has a point: visualization can help bridge communication and thus can be a very helpful tool in your alliance toolbox to improve alliance design and alliance communication.
Next, to the methodology, you will need people and experience. People in essential roles like alliance management and executive sponsorship. Quite often we see that these roles are combined with peoples existing role. In a product focussed alliance, the product manager is at the same time the alliance manager. In some organizations, the alliance management role is a dedicated role.
In a dedicated alliance role, it will be easier to build experience than in the combined role. Experience is the third cornerstone of creating successful alliances. Having experienced people in your team will increase the chances of alliance success and it will prevent you from stepping into common pitfalls.
However, this third cornerstone can present you with a bit of a chicken and the egg problem: you direly need the experience, but when building your first alliances you are also on the journey of building the experience you need. The solution to this challenge is to hire an external advisor. In a traditional hiring model, you will hire your advisor based on the hours he or she spends with you and you will only at the end know how costly hiring an experienced guide can be.
There are better models and my alliance mentoring program is one of them. In this program, I will be your alliance mentor for a period of 12 months. During this time we will closely work together and you will have me as your personal experienced, certified, alliance professional by your side, available on demand. How does that sound to you?
Interested in exploring if coaching with me is for you? Get in touch with me directly to have a conversation.