Strategic Alliance Magazine Winter 2017 - 47

EDITORIAL SUPPLEMENT
align with internal decision making and accountability. Because it is sometimes difficult to make this fit appropriately,
committee members at times must "play beyond their position" to keep the alliance moving forward. This requires
a willingness to represent beyond one's job description and
forge relationships with other leaders, who may in some
cases be internal competitors. Alliance managers can
provide support in these scenarios by anticipating and facilitating internal decision-making in support of alliance
objectives.
What is the risk of ignoring such governance realities?
If the right committees aren't staffed with the appropriate members, the alliance may miss out on opportunities
to make important decisions. If issues are not delegated
appropriately, alliance leaders can be asked to make significant choices without the information needed to do so.
In our family analogy, the alliance manager's role could
be compared in some ways to a "youngest sister" scenario. Let's say that notwithstanding her junior position in the
family hierarchy, this younger sister has an excellent relationship with her parents, siblings, and siblings' spouses. If
large family get-togethers are in the works, this sister takes
into account which holiday traditions are celebrated by her
parents, siblings, and her siblings' spouses to determine the
most appropriate type of gathering, timing, and location.
If the gathering is a meal, she negotiates contributions (including some items from her siblings' spouses' traditions)
and helps with setup and cleanup at the host's home. She
ensures that grandma has a comfortable place to sit and
then carefully considers how other family members are
seated around the dinner table. This sister knows that once
these details are taken care of, everyone will enjoy the experience, and she does a little extra work to make it happen.
The sister described in this example is a real servant leader (see "High Risk to High Reward: Using the Skills and

Tools of Servant Leadership to Manage Risk," Strategic
Alliance Magazine, Q4 2011). Her leadership often takes
place behind the scenes and produces results that benefit
the broader group, while making the more senior family
members' jobs much easier. This approach is akin to an
alliance manager's goal of ensuring that every committee
and committee member is able to effectively contribute to
the alliance. In such cases, the alliance manager who prioritizes the needs of the governance committee members
is also demonstrating servant leadership.

OWNING GOVERNANCE
When an alliance manager takes ownership of governance
and acts as an advocate, it can pay huge dividends for committees in managing alliance risk (see "Role Modeling: A
Structured Approach to Developing Great Alliance Managers," Strategic Alliance Magazine, Q1 2014).
In a family setting, people take on different roles at different times. Roles can be formal or informal, and they
can include matriarchs, patriarchs, family organizers, and
siblings of various birth orders. Such roles manifest themselves in a variety of situations; at a family dinner, perhaps
the patriarch and matriarch sit at opposite ends of the table and initiate topics of conversation. As a family expands
and matures, new people might begin to play these roles.
Over time, if a certain family member steps forward and
assumes the role of integrator and coordinator, the family is more likely to stay close as it grows and changes.
In effect, such a servant leader assumes an informal
leadership role and takes specific action to be inclusive. This person makes sure, for example, that
the brother who lives 300 miles away receives an
invitation and a follow-up call to attend major
family events. The servant leader strives to create

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