Strategic Alliance Magazine Winter 2017 - 50

THE

An Unambiguous Call to Action

'Comfort with ambiguity' is an oft-cited trait of alliance executives. But there's nothing
ambiguous about your CEO recognizing that digitization demands collaboration-
if your company is to succeed. It's time to evangelize like never before.
By John W. DeWitt

In Genevieve Fraser's Member Spotlight on
Celgene, she and Jeremy Ahouse, CSAP, PhD, discuss

how his alliance team includes "the kinds of people who
can live with ambiguity and difference even as they get
things done." I've often heard comfort with ambiguity cited as an important trait of partnering executives. I got to
thinking: Do I know any "ambiguous" alliance executives?
Most partnering professionals I know strike me as grounded, clear-as-a-bell communicators who don't hesitate
to share their point of view and who often can be very
directive. I surmise that it's precisely a lack of personal ambiguity that helps alliance execs lead amidst ambiguity. In a
nutshell, it takes confidence to collaborate.
You feel that confidence within Ron Ricci, co-author of
The Collaboration Imperative and a longtime Cisco senior
executive focused on collaboration as an organizational
capability, who joined a 90-minute conference call with
ASAP's advisory board in January. Ricci and Norma Watenpaugh, CSAP, principal of Phoenix Consulting Group,
discussed the just-published ISO 44001, the International
Standards Organization's standard for "collaborative business relationship management systems." (See in-depth
coverage forthcoming in eSAM Plus, ASAP blogs, and
future Strategic Alliance Magazine articles.) Ricci believes
the ISO standard-which aligns to ASAP's alliance management frameworks-will help propagate a common
language for business collaboration, inside and among organizations. Ricci and the many leaders he interacts with
see partnering and collaborative ability as central to grappling with the pace of a rapidly digitizing world.

"I spend all day long talking to senior executives of diverse
governments and companies around the world about their
collaboration opportunities," says Ricci, vice president of
customer experience services at Cisco, whom I spoke to
recently. "Speed is the most important thing they need
STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE | Q1 * 2017

to move their businesses [according to] every leader I've
met with over the last five years on this topic of collaboration. And companies see collaboration as the means to
get speed."
Talking to Ricci is an unambiguous look into how the
C-suite views partnering and collaboration today-and
the opportunity this represents for alliance management.
"Digitization and the ability to connect anything has taken
the notion of speed and actually made it a potential carnivore of companies," Ricci explains. "Take the technology
trend of standardization and connect to the broader business trend of digitization-now we have a market moving
almost at the pace of Moore's Law. In 18 to 24 months the
way you make money serving your customers can evolve.
... So the way organizations collaborate and work together
might need to be the most important capability they need
to survive in the 21st century."
This is an unmistakable call to action for all alliance
professionals. It's time to evangelize the value of this profession like never before. Recent ASAP, Vantage, and other
studies present unambiguous data on how professional
alliance management drives success and financial performance of partnerships. As exemplified by our cover story
and numerous sessions at ASAP conferences, the ASAP
community is on the forefront of extending and adapting
alliance management frameworks, practices, and tools to
the new, increasingly complex collaborations that now
proliferate across industries and sectors.
"How do you survive in a world where risk is growing
faster than growth?" a Fortune 500 CEO recently asked
Ricci. "You have to operate at an uncommon level of speed,
adaptability, and flexibility," Ricci responds. "And if there's
a better way to do that than collaboration, please tell me."
And if there's a better resource for collaboration success
than your alliance team, the ASAP community, and the
alliance management profession, please tell me. n

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