Strategic Alliance Magazine Q2 2017 - 50

THE

Achieve 'Miracles' with Your Peers

Where else but at the annual ASAP
Global Alliance Summit can you
grapple with pivotal questions such as,
'Do you create mastery throughout the
organization, or do you create the
silo for really good professionals?'
By Cynthia B. Hanson

In a virtually connected world, you still can't beat
the value of face-to-face. Case in point, the 2017 ASAP

Global Alliance Summit, "Profit, Innovation, and Value for
the Partnering Enterprise," Feb. 28-March 2, San Diego,
California, offered both long-time and new attendees of
the annual conclave opportunities to share ideas and information-best practices, tips, skills, advice, and insights
on how to understand and negotiate the ever-evolving new
ecosystem of multi-partner, multi-industry collaboration.
"It's great to [see old partners as] part of our 'family' reunion," said Brooke Paige, executive committee chairman
for ASAP, during her Summit welcome. "For newcomers,
I hope this is the first of many reunions for you. We are
building a community through active participation. It's a
call to action for alliance veterans, so please try to find at
least two new people, personally welcome them, ask what
brought them here, and try to help them," she prompted.

There were plenty of opportunities to fulfill that mandate.
Newbies could be found milling around the lawn during
networking breaks, on workshop teams, even on the podium. I had the opportunity to speak with one-Troy
Sechrist, head of strategic partnerships at Hewlett Packard.
It was the first month of his newly minted membership,
and his first ASAP Summit. He attended a workshop led
by the colorful Candido Arreche, CA-AM, veteran alliance
executive at Xerox Worldwide Alliances, entitled "How to
Resolve Conflict in Your Alliance," which Sechrist summed
up as "very engaging." The applications and tools were very
applicable to solve real business challenges in current alliances; the workshop's working group and teamwork also
were very helpful in applying the tools, he pointed out. "I
have a team of alliance managers, and I wanted to compare
notes with other alliance professionals about best practices.
STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE | Q2 * 2017

This workshop caught my eye. Inevitably, there are challenges in alliances that are not straightforward, so I wanted
to become better equipped to grow alliances to mutual
benefit," he said.
"I think it's important to get more millennials involved in
ASAP," said Andrew Fennessy, technology alliance manager at BeyondTrust, who joined ASAP at the end of 2015
and was attending his second Summit. No longer a newbie,
Fennessy just became the first millennial ASAP member
to achieve CA-AM certification.
"I didn't know ASAP existed a year ago. I am discovering
a whole new world," said a woman in the audience from
Belgium during a question-and-answer session at the
"Summit Leadership Spotlight Interviews" led by John W.
DeWitt, editor and publisher of Strategic Alliance Magazine and ASAP Media. "Do you create mastery throughout
the organization, or do you create the silo for really good
professionals? What is the tradeoff between mastery and
autonomy? The silo seems so natural for pharma," she then
asked, prompting a lively discussion beneficial to members-new and old.
"You want to find the right people who have a great viewpoint-a system engineer you pull in. You need to find the
knowledge workers to help your collaboration," responded
panel member Kevin Hickey, president and chief executive
officer at BeyondTrust. "Executives are not looking at [everything] every day. They have a narrow viewpoint. ... It
shouldn't just be execs making decisions."
"There's often a long debate in companies that quality belongs to the quality department. Actually, quality belongs
to everyone who wants to own it," added Céline Schillinger,
head of innovation and engagement at Sanofi Pasteur, who
spearheaded a major change in the company corporate
culture. "It's important to co-create the purpose so that
it's attractive and co-owned. ... Boundaries become less
important. What's important is how motivated and connected people are in the organization instead of appointing
teams. ... People want to make a difference. When you tap
into this pool, you achieve miracles."
And when you tap into the ASAP community-leveraging
the insights you only get from peer-to-peer interactions
with other partnering practitioners-you and your organization can achieve partnering miracles, too. n

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Strategic Alliance Magazine Q2 2017