Strategic Alliance Magazine Q3 2017 - 18

No Pressure, No Diamonds-
No Sand, No Pearls
Lilly over the past few decades, we feel it is important
to share this insight with others in our profession."

By Cynthia B. Hanson
For 14 years, Eli Lilly and Company's "Voice of the
Alliance Survey" asked members of partnering organizations as well as the employees at their own
company who worked on the alliance to measure
the health of their alliances as well as the technical
and commercial success of their products. The survey is comprised of about 60 questions aggregated
into 13 themes in four general categories: cultural
fit, strategic fit, operational fit, and perceptions (how
the alliance is going). Questions range from whether they feel their views are being considered to how
comfortable they feel to share information.
Shortly after creating the office of alliance management in 1999, Lilly instituted this survey and began
collecting data. The initial idea was to take alliances that were working on molecules and go over the
data to find areas for improvement. Lilly found, after
many years of such collection, that the company had a
treasure trove of meaningful information. After 140
surveys of 45 alliances in which 3,500 people were
interviewed, an outside firm of statisticians mined
this data and rated Lilly, the partners, and the overall
partnership. When the sections relating to conflict
were analyzed, the conclusions were revealing: The
right kind of conflict leads to better products.*

"This was the first time we looked at all 14 years'
worth of data holistically, and when we did, we took
pause in realizing the importance of the trends,"
explains David Thompson, CA-AM, chief alliance
officer at Eli Lilly and Company. "We always thought
that conflict led to better outcomes, but now we have
data that shows that our intuition was, indeed, correct. We want to have positive working relationships
with our alliance partners, but we also know that a
little irritation will end up being a good thing. As
with other tools we have developed or realizations we
have made in the Office of Alliance Management at
STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE | Q3 * 2017

Thompson and his colleagues at Lilly are now convinced that "a little irritation" in alliances can serve
the same purpose as sand trapped in an oyster: It produces a beautiful pearl over time. The study found
that the probability of technical and commercial
success increased when that process was present in
Lilly alliances, he says. It was not about personal conflicts: Generally, these partnerships involved people
who liked each other. Lilly called it a "productive"
irritation based on creative tension stemming from
differing opinions on strategy and tactics. A direct
correlation existed between how the partners interacted within the alliance and the forecasting of
technical success, according to the data.
"The key for us was to link this data with outcome
data to see if we can forecast two, three, five, ten years
on down the road. ... When we got this data back, we
thought, 'There must be some mistake.' However, what
we found was that when you have more heat, discussion, debate, and contention, that's where things work
out better," adds Alan Colquitt, PhD, director of global
assessment, organization effectiveness and workforce
research at Lilly. The architect of Lilly's employee survey strategy, including team and alliance/collaboration
surveys, Colquitt and his group additionally conduct
workforce research projects.
While partners shouldn't create unreasonable conflict to
jump-start creativity, too often partners shy away from
good conflict and irritation, which can result in innovation, Colquitt says. "A happy alliance is not a productive
alliance. You have to get along well enough to stay alive.
The more uncomfortable the Lilly people were with
their partners, the better the alliance turned out. Not all
alliances are going to be happy places-in fact, cozy relationships are simply not as productive." n
*See "The Right Kind of Conflict Leads to Better Products,"
Harvard Business Review, December, 2016: https://hbr.
org/2016/12/the-right-kind-of-conflict-leads-to-betterproducts

https://hbr.org/2016/12/the-right-kind-of-conflict-leads-to-better-products https://hbr.org/2016/12/the-right-kind-of-conflict-leads-to-better-products https://hbr.org/2016/12/the-right-kind-of-conflict-leads-to-better-products

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Strategic Alliance Magazine Q3 2017