Strategic Alliance Magazine Winter 2017 - 7

Collaboration-By Customer Demand
Get your partnering capability ready for a quantum
leap forward. And prepare to be busy.

Front

By Michael Leonetti, CSAP

Alliance executives, historically disinclined to toot our own horns, have learned in

recent years that it takes a brass section in the enterprise
orchestra to herald (again, again, again) the immense
value of professional partnering management. I do my
fair share of reminding ASAP audiences to promote the
profession-admonishing you not to "stick to your knitting" but to seek opportunities everywhere to harness
alliance management capability for today's business
challenges.
Good advice, but already dated. That's been our professional argument for years. "Heed our collaborative call!
Embrace the things we say create value and more revenue. We've even got research that proves it works!" But
that conversation is passé. Right before our eyes, alliance management is shifting from valuable to essential.
Partnering capability is now required for survival.
The end customer is changing the entire ecosystem, or
supply/distribution network, or collaboration platform,
or development pipeline, or go-to-market, or however
you serve that end customer (or patient or citizen). The
products or value we create and the tasks we take on
now require new, multi-level, complex collaborations.
Or else the customer turns elsewhere-and our company is eclipsed by upstarts, made irrelevant by players
from other industries, left in the dust by those smart
enough to know not just that they can't do it alone, but
that they must be partnering experts to succeed.
Not quite there with me? Talk to a marketing person
about what's happening with the customer; talk to the
channel about who buys their product, and how; talk
to someone who's working on an oncology drug-and
working with patient advocates; read our cover story in
this issue. Bottom line, it's the customer who is shaping
what the future products and solutions we make will
look like. Every slice or segment of the economy we look
at-smart cities, high-end biopharma work, genomics,

technology, finance, transportation, you name it-it's happening everywhere. As
Jan Twombly, CSAP, of The Rhythm of Business and her
colleagues Jeff Shuman, CSAP, PhD, and Lorin Coles,
CSAP, explain, you've got to build the capability to partner everywhere.
In our ASAP frameworks, we talk about the alliance
lifecycle, but building capability is really the meta lifecycle of alliance management. Building the organization's
partnering-everywhere capability should be the quest of
every partnering professional. Now it's not just a good
thing for your organization. It's about being able to deliver at the speed demanded by your customer. Survival.
Smart alliance leaders embrace the journey-and are
making the pivot to new approaches to propagate the
discipline everywhere it's needed in the organization.
Indeed, Karen Denton, CSAP, of Bayer and Stu Kliman,
CA-AM, of Vantage Partners are working on a future
Strategic Alliance Magazine article on what they've
learned from Bayer's capability-building journey. Instead of touting solutions to "known" needs, they've
sought to really understand needs of stakeholders-both
alliance executives and other execs who work within alliances. In particular, they looked for gaps, the missing
links, the levers execs needed-honing in on "what people were wanting us to do for them," and offering "more
of a carrot, less of a stick," Denton explains. We wanted
to make sure whatever we did was more simpatico with
their needs, and actually complemented and reinforced
their capabilities."
You'll hear these sorts of thoughts and experiences,
in many variations and contexts, at the 2017 Summit in San Diego. I look forward to seeing you there.
This year's event promises to propel your capability
forward-and position you to be a better leader and
alliance management champion, conductor of your enterprise's collaboration orchestra. n
Q1 * 2017 | STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE

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