Strategic Alliance Magazine Winter 2017 - 24

DEPENDENT

w Internal stakeholders' experiences worktional interlock, including what occurs to
keep momentum at key transition points.

The processes and tools to support get-

to-market and go-to-market activities.

You will also want to understand the customers and
their needs, the business environment, and competitive landscape. Pay attention to who the disrupters
are and how they are disrupting incumbents. Align
with overall business transformation efforts.
Hold this understanding as your vision. But keep in
mind that it will iterate as you learn more.

Creating a next-generation partnering-everywhere
capability is a three-phase journey (See Figure 4-The
Capability Journey):

u Design and prototype.
v Implement and iterate.
w Make programmatic and scale.
Where do you start? It could be aggressively recruiting
a certain type of partner. It might be revamping the engagement process for working with the most strategic
partners that have complex relationships with more
than one business unit. It could be building uniform
practice and upping the collaboration skill levels of a
single business unit.

Once you have the right number of initiatives identified (this will be a function of criticality and available
resources), develop a prototype to test the inherent
assumptions (which you have specifically identified,
determining the data you need to validate or invalidate
them). Gather that data, and iterate before you commit
resources to build. Prototypes can be anything from a
slide deck showing how you think something will be
STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE | Q1 * 2017

Phase 3:

ALIGNED

overarching governance and func-

Stakeholder Buy-in

x The

Make Programmatic and Scale

Phase 2:

Implement and Iterate

SUPPORTIVE

ing with partners.

Phase 1:

Design and Prototype

INTRODUCE

EXPAND

FULLY INTEGRATED

Ability to Execute

Figure 4-The Capability Journey

designed and built to acting out a process with a case
study or role play.
You will then be ready to build out the processes, tools,
artifacts, training, etc.; implement your first projects;
learn from them; and iterate your assumptions as required. Once you onboard the learning from your initial
projects, prepare to make your capability-building programmatic and scale as appropriate. Then, milestone by
milestone, transform your partnering capability from
a traditional, hub-and-spoke alliance perspective to a
next-generation partnering-everywhere capability that
enables your company to realize the transformational
power of the fourth industrial revolution. n
Jan Twombly and Jeff Shuman are the principals of The
Rhythm of Business, Inc. Lorin Coles is co-founder and CEO of
Alliancesphere, LLC. They have joined forces to form the SMART
Partnering Alliance, delivering executive suite-sponsored,
enterprise-wide solutions to build next-generation partnering
capability for connected ecosystems. This article is adapted from
The Power to Partner Everywhere: Why You Need It, What It Is,
How to Build It, a recent e-book published by the authors.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Strategic Alliance Magazine Winter 2017