In partnership, there is strength
Since 1999, Lilly’s Integrated Alliance Management professionals have helped companies maximize the value of partnered assets. With strong roots in governance and relationship management, we excel at problem solving and value-chain integration at all stages of discovery, development, and commercialization.
AnOffice Officeof ofEli Eli Lilly Lilly and Company Company An
As an organization and as individuals, we are committed to the success of every partnership we manage. By staying true to mutual goals—and by doing everything necessary to achieve them—we help partners realize the value inherent in every strategic alliance.
E-mail stwait@lilly.com for more information.
Find Your Next Superstar Alliance Professional
The ASAP Career Center The Gateway to the Best Alliance, Partnership, Collaboration, and Channel Program Managers ASAP members, save significant money on job postings—contact us now for your discount code! Find the candidates who:
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Possess the skills to steer your alliances, partnerships, collaborations, and channel engagements to fruition Are CA-AM and/or CSAP–certified Fit your company’s strategic needs
Individual, Corporate, and Global Members, contact Lori Gold or Michele Yudysky to receive your discount code and post your job opening at the ASAP Career Center today! Lori Gold Senior Manager of Membership Services +1-781-562-1630 ext 203 lgold@strategic-alliances.org
Michele Yudysky Membership Coordinator +1-781-562-1630 ext 209 myudysky@strategic-alliances.org
“I’ve added ASAP certification as something I look for; it’s in our official job postings for any position we have.”
—Gerald J. Dehkes, CSAP, director of alliance management at KPMG LLP
960 Turnpike St, Canton MA 02021 USA Tel: +1-781-562-1630 strategic-alliances.org info@strategic-alliances.org
The Best Alliance Management Training You Will Find – Certified! Certification Workshops Coming to the 2014 ASAP Global Alliance Summit CA-AM & CSAP Exam Preparatory Workshops Monday, March 10, 8:30 am – 2:30 pm The Talking Stick Resort Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
ASAP GLOBAL
CSAP Exam
ALLIANCE SUMMIT
Thursday, March 13, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm The Talking Stick Resort Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
CA-AM
For more information, or to register for one of these workshops or the CSAP Exam, please contact Jennifer Silver at +1-781-562-1630 ext. 205 or jsilver@strategic-alliances.org.
MARCH 10-13, 2014 SCOTTSDALE
CSAP
up front Bringing Knowledge Where It’s Needed Our Members Expect a Growing Base and Fresh Content—and We’re Finding New Ways to Bring It to Them in 2014 By Michael Leonetti
ONE OF THE EVERGREEN GOALS OF OUR ASSOCIATION is to grow our membership and spread our community’s knowledge to the fast-growing number of organizations that sorely need alliance management and partnering expertise—and in turn benefit from these new members’ wisdom. When we think about expanding our base, the discussion has tended to revolve around new industries. While our efforts to break into new verticals have been critical—people from engineering, insurance, sales and marketing firms, oil and gas, engineering and construction, and consumer packaged goods, among others, have joined ASAP over the past year and a half—we must not overlook the tremendous growth opportunities that exist in our traditional segments. For years, the IT industry has relied heavily on channel partners (i.e., “sell-through” relationships) to bring in large volumes of revenues. While the most fruitful channel partner relationships have always been built on collaboration, too often success has been limited by a transactional view. Today, the impact of new “SMAC” technologies (social media, mobile, big data analytics, and cloud) and new business models is demanding that technology providers and resellers work more closely. Many in channels now have to not only rethink their sales goals, but also reevaluate the skills required to achieve them— and whether their staffs truly have them. ASAP has been at the forefront of educating and providing a forum for those individuals who make business partnerships successful. We have consistently provided tools and methodologies that partnership-based businesspeople will need in order to thrive in the years to come. The 2014 ASAP Global Quarter 1, 2014
Alliance Summit program contains a track of powerful sessions dedicated to channels and their changing landscape. Our chapters are looking into programming around this topic for the coming year. ASAP Global is also examining the possibilities for delivering other content devoted to this segment well after the Summit through webinars and various education channels. In addition to providing content that is relevant to many of our current IT-industry members, who may focus primarily on their strategic alliances, we hope our channel efforts, which are focused on reaching or exceeding sales objectives by mastering the critical success factors of partnership management, will bring perspectives from new faces, something that ASAP colleagues of all industries have cited as a major benefit of membership ever since I joined the association in 2002.
Training for New Alliance Managers ASAP has always prided itself on being the place alliance management professionals of all experience levels turn to. This year, we are expanding our offerings for those learning the ropes in alliance management. More and more companies are establishing brand-new alliance management divisions, while several that have had partnership operations for some time are expanding their groups, necessitating the education of new team mem-
bers making their first foray into the profession. The leaders of ASAP Global Member Eli Lilly and Company’s alliance management practice, one of the longest-standing and most accomplished in the history of the discipline, will deliver ASAP’s first-ever “Introduction to Alliance Management Workshop” at the ASAP Global Alliance Summit in March. Thanks to the generosity of Eli Lilly, which is sharing its talent and intellectual property with ASAP, attendees will learn the basics of the start-up, maintenance, and winding down of alliances, and will walk away with case studies, tools, and techniques that they can apply as they learn their craft. As with channel management programming, we will look for ways to support this critical group of members throughout 2014. We always have to bring fresh thinking to our ongoing tasks. Our channels and entrylevel alliance programs will ensure that we continue to meet our members’ core needs. I wish you and your partnerships great success in 2014—and hope to see you at our annual ASAP Global Alliance Summit March 10–13 in Scottsdale, Ariz., USA.
Michael Leonetti, CSAP, president and CEO of ASAP, is executive publisher of Strategic Alliance Magazine. 5
Quarter 1, 2014
The magazine of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals AN ASAP MEDIA PUBLICATION www.ASAPmedia.org www.strategic-alliances.org EDITORIAL TEAM Michael Leonetti, CSAP Executive Publisher +1-781-562-1630 ext. 201 mleonetti@strategic-alliances.org John W. DeWitt, Publisher +1-978-544-1866 jdewitt@ASAPmedia.org Jon Lavietes, Editorial Director +1-415-572-4408 jlavietes@ASAPmedia.org Michael Burke, Editor-in-Chief +1-413-665-4958 mburke@ASAPmedia.org Greg Caulton, Creative Director +1-413-461-7096 gcaulton@ASAPmedia.org Gary Lee, Online Media Manager +1-978-544-1866 glee@ASAPmedia.org Rik Rolski, Sponsorship Sales Director +1-978-544-1866 rrolski@ASAPmedia.org Michelle Duga, Sponsorship Coordinator +1-978-544-1866 mduga@ASAPmedia.org Emily Bayard, Image Researcher +1-413-461-7096 ebayard@ASAPmedia.org Mike Ruocco, Graphic Designer +1-978-544-1866 mruocco@ASAPmedia.org ASAP STAFF Michael Leonetti, President and CEO +1-781-562-1630 ext. 201 mleonetti@strategic-alliances.org Lori Gold, Director of Membership Services +1-781-562-1630 ext. 203 lgold@strategic-alliances.org Michele Shannon, CA-AM, CMP Senior Meeting & Event Manager +1-781-562-1630 ext. 204 mshannon@strategic-alliances.org Kimberly T. Miller, Marketing Director +1-781-562-1630 ext. 208 kmiller@strategic-alliances.org Brendan Ward, Administrative Support +1-781-562-1630 ext. 200 bward@strategic-alliances.org Diane Lemkin, Accounting Manager +1-781-562-1630 ext. 206 dianel@strategic-alliances.org Jennifer Silver, Certification Coordinator +1-781-562-1630 ext. 205 jsilver@strategic-alliances.org Michele Yudysky, Membership Coordinator +1-781-562-1630 ext. 209 myudysky@strategic-alliances.org
in this issue
18
n PR MISHAPS
A Matter of Perspective
Misaligned Press Releases and Rogue Media Statements Can Make for Public-Facing Crises in an Alliance By Jon Lavietes
Few would dispute that just about any alliance will come with unforeseen challenges and tense moments over its lifespan. Fighting fires is tough enough internally, so imagine how much harder it is when the rough patches in your partnership become visible to the public at large.
24
n BOOK EXCERPT
The Control-Trust Dilemma
Finding the Right Balance Makes It Easier to Arrive at an Effective Alliance Design By Ard-Pieter de Man
In an excerpt from his new book Alliances: An Executive Guide to Designing Successful Strategic Partnerships, our guest author outlines two theories for alliance design: 1) the control view, and 2) the trust view. One of the most fundamental questions that needs to be answered when designing an alliance is: What is the right balance between control and trust given the specific aims this alliance seeks to achieve?
Š Copyright 2014 Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals. All Rights Reserved.
6
Strategic Alliance Magazine
28
n 2014 ASAP GLOBAL ALLIANCE SUMMIT PREVIEW
Join Us at Our Place in the Sun
The Alliance Management Community Will Gather and “Pass the Talking Stick” in Arizona This March By Michael Burke
ASAP GLOBAL
ALLIANCE SUMMIT
MARCH 10-13, 2014 SCOTTSDALE
This year’s ASAP Global Alliance Summit will bring together alliance management professionals and thought leaders from around the world to convene in Scottsdale, Ariz., March 10–13, for the best in alliance management programming, professional development, and networking opportunities—not to mention desert sun, outdoor and indoor fun, all-new conference tracks and sessions, and—a marshmallow contest?
33
n EDITORIAL SUPPLEMENT
Role Modeling
A Structured Approach to Developing Great Alliance Managers By Rachelle E. Hawkins, CA-AM, Joanna L. C. May, CA-AM, David S. Thompson, CA-AM, and Steven E. Twait, CSAP
Alliance management is a composite discipline that requires skills from a range of functions, including project management, human resources, finance, legal, engineering, IT, and business development. This knowledge needs to be complemented with a comprehensive combination of interpersonal, professional, and alliancespecific competencies. According to the authors, the good news is that these skills can be acquired, applied, and enhanced over time to achieve the alliance manager’s ultimate goal: superior business results for the partnership. Sponsored by Eli Lilly & Co.
Regular Features: 5 n UP FRONT Our Members Expect a Growing Base and Fresh Content— and We’re Finding New Ways to Bring It to Them in 2014 11 n COLLABORATIVE BUZZ Alliance News Briefs | People in the News | ASAP & ASAP Partner Calendar of Events | ASAP Chapter Updates Quarter 1, 2014
15 n ASAP MEMBER SPOTLIGHT A Broader, More Aligned View A Revamped Alliance Practice Has Unisys Taking a Longer-Term, Strategic Approach to Partnerships By Jon Lavietes 7
Quarter 1, 2014
The magazine of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals ASAP EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Russ Buchanan, CSAP ASAP Chairman of the Board Vice President, Worldwide Alliances, Xerox Corp. Jack Pearson, CSAP ASAP Vice Chairman Managing Director & Chief Alliance Officer, Alliance Development International, LLC Harry Atkins, CSAP ASAP Treasurer Senior Director, Corporate Development, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Inc. Brian Handley, CA-AM ASAP Secretary Business Development, Emerson Corp. Christine Carberry, CSAP Chairman, ASAP Knowledge Base & Research Committee Vice President, Program & Alliance Management, EnVivo Pharmaceuticals Snehal Desai, CA-AM Chairman, ASAP Marketing Committee Global Marketing Director, The Dow Chemical Company Grif Morrel, CSAP Chairman, ASAP Chapter Presidents’ Council Senior Manager, Sales Business Development and Operations, Cisco Systems, Inc.
in this issue 41 n YOUR CAREER
Influencing W ithout Authority Even Without the Power to Command, an Alliance Manager Can Elicit Positive Actions from Others for the Benefit of the Partnership | By Jon Lavietes
The ability to influence people within one’s own organization and at partner companies is one of the alliance professional’s most important skills. At any given time, an alliance manager might turn to a champion, a committee, or a good old-fashioned sales pitch to nudge people to serve the partnership’s interests.
45
n ALLIANCE CHAMPION
Alliances Under the Hood
Keith Gamble Uses a Mix of Technical Savvy and People Skills to Bring Big IT Players Together and Drive EMC’s Technology Alliances to the Finish Line | By Michael Burke
Keith Gamble of EMC has parlayed a technical background as an engineer into a decade-long career as senior alliances manager at the Massachusetts-based IT firm. In the context of his job, the art and science of alliance management involves blending technological know-how and “counseling” skills to get everyone working together to drive joint solutions forward.
Alistair Pim, CSAP Chairman, ASAP Professional Development Committee Vice President, Global Strategic Alliances, Schneider Electric Jan Twombly, CSAP Chairman, ASAP Programs Committee President, The Rhythm of Business, Inc.
Strategic Alliance Magazine is published quarterly. Publisher is The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals, 960 Turnpike Street, Canton, MA 02021, +1-781-562-1630. Subscriptions are $99 for one year, $189 for two years. Canadian subscriptions are $149 per year. All other international subscriptions are $199 (using air mail). Subscription inquiries: +1-781-562-1630. Periodicals postage is paid in Chicopee, MA, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE, 960 Turnpike Street, Canton, MA 02021. Copyright 2013, The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For reprints, please contact The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals at +1-781-562-1630. 8
50
n THE CLOSE
Collaboration for Smarties
As Collaboration Sweeps Through the World of Business, What Does the Future Hold for the Profession of Alliance Management? By John W. DeWitt
Next issue’s main feature will attempt to foretell what the future of the alliance management profession has in store. Here is a sneak peek at some of the insights shared by a few of the alliance community’s brightest thought leaders. Strategic Alliance Magazine
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960 Turnpike St, Canton MA 02021 USA Tel: +1-781-562-1630 strategic-alliances.org info@strategic-alliances.org
Collaborative Buzz ASAP Welcomes Covance as a New Global Member By Jon Lavietes and Michael Burke
THE CONTRACT RESEARCH ORGANIZATION (CRO) Covance, an ASAP Corporate Member for several years, has sharpened its alliance game and moved up to Global Member status, reflecting the company’s deep commitment to close collaborations with its customers, which range from large, global pharmaceutical companies and well-established biotechs to smaller, emerging biopharma organizations. With pharma companies outsourcing more and more critical clinical and nonclinical development work every year to CROs, the kinds of relationships that make up Covance’s bread and butter are taking on a greater element of strategic partnership, more intimate and intertwined than traditional, purely transactional relationships. “Today clients seek partners who offer anticipatory thinking, deliver insightful solutions, and operate as a seamless extension of their own team,” said John Watson, president of strategic partnering and chief commercial officer for Covance. “Our goal is to deliver this type of consultative and collaborative experience to every client, whether large pharma or emerging biotech, with every interaction. ASAP’s extensive resources will further enhance our existing alliance management capabilities and help us establish and expand enduring relationships with all our clients.” Covance is a full-service drug development company, with capabilities spanning both early- and late-stage development. In addition to helping develop 46 of the 50 top-selling drugs, and 82 percent of all FDA-approved drugs in 2012, Covance has also pioneered the design of landmark alliances between CROs and the pharmaceutical industry. “Across the biopharmaceutical industry, Quarter 1, 2014
pipelines are becoming increasingly dependent on partnerships, particularly in the clinical phases of the drug development cycle,” said Michael Leonetti, president and CEO of ASAP. “Companies like Covance turn to ASAP to provide their personnel access to the tools, training, and networking opportunities with the profession’s most respected thought leaders that will ensure their collaborations achieve the organization’s most pressing objectives. We are proud to play an important role in helping Covance maintain its successful handin-hand customer relationships.” The company is already making the most of its ASAP membership in a number of ways. It is significantly increasing the number of professionals certified in current alliance management practices and methodologies, sending its personnel to leading global ASAP events such as the ASAP BioPharma Conference and ASAP Global Alliance Summit, and providing representation on ASAP’s board to help chart the direction of the organization and the profession. In addition, as an ASAP Global Member, Covance will have the opportunity to add executives from its partner organizations to its membership roster, thereby giving them access to the plethora of ASAP benefits and resources, including Strategic Alliance Magazine, which profiled Covance vice
president of alliance management Andy Eibling in the Q4 2013 issue, and Covance’s alliance program in the Member Spotlight feature of the Q4 2012 edition.
ASAP News The Summit’s Almost Here—Don’t Delay! Registration for the 2014 ASAP Global Alliance Summit continues—but it’s nearly here, so if you haven’t registered yet, now’s the time. From March 10 to 13, 2014, hundreds of alliance management professionals and thought leaders from all over the world will descend on the Phoenix area to convene at the Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., for this annual must-attend event, by far the world’s largest annual gathering of leading companies and practitioners in the field of alliance management. (See Summit Preview, page 28.) The 2014 Summit will feature the usual top-notch programming, world-class networking, and professional development opportunities, including certification workshops and handson skill-building sessions. This year, however, the Summit will be enhanced with all-new content, including an introduction to alliance management workshop led by some of the profession’s pioneers from Eli Lilly and Company, a 11
Collaborative Buzz half-day track covering issues in channel management, informal “un-conference” sessions, the First Annual Marshmallow Challenge, and much more. To register for the Summit or for more information, go to www.strategic-alliances.org/summit.
New Corporate Members Come Onboard ASAP is delighted to announce that the following new Corporate Members have joined the ASAP community: 360incentives Becton Dickinson (BD) Plantronics SunGard Public Sector Uprise Co. Ltd Welcome to all our new members!
ASAP and ASAP Partner Events 2014 ASAP Global Alliance Summit
Monday, March 10 – Thursday, March 13, 2014, Talking Stick Resort, 9800 E. Indian Bend Rd., Scottsdale, Ariz., USA (check www.strategic-alliances.org/summit for more information)
Alliance News Peugeot and GM: Progress or Regress?
As 2013 came to an end, PSA Peugeot Citroen (PSA) and General Motors (GM) announced “further steps” in their ongoing strategic alliance. It’s a matter of opinion, however, whether recent moves represent a continuing forward march or a hasty retreat. The two companies’ joint press release stated that the “Alliance remains structured around the main pillars of joint programs, purchasing, and logistics, focused on Europe, and is extended into 12
cross manufacturing.” It also confirmed “continued cooperation” on two vehicle programs based on Peugeot platforms: the B-MPV (multipurpose vehicle) and C-CUV (crossover-utility vehicle) programs. It was further noted that each company will build one vehicle for the other—the B-MPVs in GM’s plant in Zaragoza, Spain, and the C-CUVs in Peugeot’s plant in Sochaux, France. However, a Reuters report stated that the move represented a scaling back of the alliance, and in effect, GM was putting “a brave face on yet another setback for its efforts to seek growth in Europe through collaboration and partnerships.” The report further noted that the two companies have canceled one joint vehicle project and said that “annual savings from sharing development costs on a raft of projects will now come to only $1.2 billion, rather than $2 billion.” One industry analyst quoted by Reuters opined that “joint ventures always start with overly ambitious targets,” adding that he estimated joint savings for Peugeot and GM to amount to zero. “Partnerships can work, but it always takes much longer for the benefits to materialize,” the analyst added. The companies’ joint release said that Peugeot and GM “will simplify the joint governance of the Alliance and remove as a ground for terminating the Alliance the failure to achieve a minimum number of cooperation programs within a specific time. They will also provide for a waiver of GM’s right to terminate the Alliance under certain conditions in the event certain parties take a stake in PSA, in which case such parties would support the Alliance and GM would vote any PSA shares it would then hold in favor of any such transaction.” “The Alliance between PSA and GM is based on a balanced approach. The vehicles of both manufacturers will be highly differentiated and fully consistent with their respective brand characteristics,” said Dr. Karl-Thomas Neumann, GM executive vice president
and president, Europe. “The partners are now focused on execution of the Alliance while remaining open to new opportunities.” Still together, but thinking of seeing other people?
Dos Cervezas, Por Favor: Beer Battles Brewing in Guatemala
Two of the world’s largest beer companies are set to do battle for the hearts, minds, and palates of Guatemala’s cerveza drinkers, according to the Global Post. The biggest brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev, has been “besieging” Guatemala’s national beer maker, Cervecería Centro Americana, “for years,” the Global Post reported. Now, SABMiller Plc, the world’s number two brewer, and the Cervecería have announced that they are forming a strategic alliance in Guatemala. Initially, the Cervecería will distribute only 355 ml bottles of Miller Genuine Draft, but the agreement may expand to include other Miller offerings. The family-owned company, which has struggled in recent years since its Guatemalan monopoly was broken in 2003 by the Brazilian division of Anheuser-Busch InBev, reportedly hopes to gain 20 to 25 percent of Guatemala’s premium beer market. AB InBev produces only one beer for the Guatemalan market, Brahva, a cheaper brew that competes with the Cervecería’s Gallo beer. But AB InBev has apparently been gaining market share in the country, and the Cervecería’s share of the market may have fallen to 70 percent since the breaching of its former monopoly. According to industry figures, SABMiller is the third-largest brewer in Latin America, behind AB InBev and Heineken. The Global Post report speculated that the Cervecería may be counting on Miller as a “white knight” that could use its “deep pockets and... thick portfolio of brands” to shore up the Guatemalan company’s weakened Strategic Alliance Magazine
position in its home country and resist AB InBev’s assault. Meanwhile, drink up, amigos—and Salud!
Tequila! Diddy Gets the Alliance Spirit
While we’re on the subject of liquid refreshment, premium drinks company Diageo and rapper, producer, actor, and entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs have created a new joint venture that has acquired premium tequila brand DeLeón, as reported by the Associated Press, New York Post, Los Angeles Times, and liquor industry sources. The JV, a 50/50 global partnership between Diageo and Combs Wine & Spirits, builds on the separate strategic alliance formed by Diageo and Combs Enterprises to develop the Cîroc vodka brand, noted for its neo–Rat Pack TV ad campaign featuring Diddy himself, a bevy of beauties, and a bunch of well-dressed buds partying in Vegas to the strains of Sinatra. Since the alliance began in 2007, according to liquor industry site The Shout, Cîroc has grown from just 50,000 cases a year to nearly 2 million. The acquisition of DeLeón will allow the brand to benefit from Diageo’s strong distribution network, supply chain, and marketing capability, as well as Diddy’s access to influencers and track record of marketing luxury lifestyle brands, according to Diageo. Diageo described DeLeón as “a 100 per cent [sic] blue weber agave boutique tequila brand with a loyal following in Hollywood and the U.S. music industry.” The tequila has five variants with suggested retail prices ranging from $120 to over $1,000. Diageo cut its ties with José Cuervo in 2012, so the Diddy deal should help the company return to a prominent position in North American tequila, according to Diageo North America president Larry Schwartz. Diddy, who has been the public face of Cîroc since 2007, under a joint marketing and profit-sharing deal that has brought nearly a 40-fold rise in annual sales Quarter 1, 2014
volumes for the brand’s products, said in an interview, “With Cîroc, we dated. Now with DeLeón, we’re married. This deal is way better. This makes me a true owner.”
they are getting gold for having fun but really they get it for engagement,” said Ayogo CEO Michael Fergusson in an interview with MedCity News.
In a separate interview, Diddy said, “The way I got introduced to [DeLeón] is that every place that I would go...any cool, real immersion type of spot, I would see it. Then I was in the movies one day and I’m watching Iron Man 2 and that’s all Iron Man had behind his bar. And I was like, ‘This thing is calling me, man.’ I’ve always had a dream to have a tequila. And I always wanted to acquire a company... this is a historic day for Sean Combs as a businessman. Jay [Z] got Ace of Spades, and today I got DeLeón. We up in here. We went from buying, supporting, to owning, you know?”
According to the FierceBiotechIT story, biopharma companies have begun looking at ways in which gamification of treatments might improve patient outcomes. Merck’s diabetes drug Januvia, for example, is partly dependent on patients’ sticking to the treatment regimen and managing other aspects of their health. Boehringer Ingelheim, Novartis, and Sanofi have also reportedly contacted Ayogo for help with gamification projects, and Pfizer has recently signed a deal with Boston start-up Akili Interactive Labs to use a video game to diagnose early signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
As to brand marketing for DeLeón, Diddy said, “We’re taking our time, and we’ll work together, and we’re going to come up with a marketing plan. But it’s going to be very surgical, it’s going to be savvy, and it’s going to be totally different from Cîroc. We’re not just putting it on the assembly line.”
The Game’s Afoot for Merck
Big Pharma company and ASAP Corporate Member Merck is working with health gaming company Ayogo on a Type 2 diabetes initiative that is actually a game designed to benefit diabetes patients, according to a story in FierceBiotechIT. In the game, dubbed the “Type 2 Travelers Project,” players create an avatar for themselves and then complete mini-games to win gold coins. The coins allow users to advance to the next part of the “world,” where more games and more coins await them. Interaction with the online diabetes community is a key purpose of the game, with players sharing their reasons for wanting to control the disease. The community aspect is also intended to help combat depression, an unfortunate aspect of dealing with diabetes, by lessening players’ feelings of isolation. “Our goal is to help diabetics get their condition under control. Users feel like
Nice Meeting You— Virtually, That Is
The meetings management division of American Express, American Express Meetings & Events, is partnering with webcast provider NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions to provide clients with virtual and hybrid meeting solutions, according to SuccessfulMeetings.com. The new offering, which is a bit of a mouthful—officially called American Express Meetings & Events Multimedia Solutions powered by NASDAQ QMX Corporate Solutions—will connect virtual and physical events by distributing live meeting content for companies worldwide via webcasts and webinars, online video content management, venue and location services, planning and logistics management, virtual meeting executions, online meeting catalogs, and production coordination. As a result, it’s intended that American Express Meetings & Events will be able to offer its clients a one-stop shop for physical and virtual meeting components. “By combining American Express’s keen understanding of how and when to employ virtual elements with NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions’ leading multimedia solutions, meetings owners, presenters, and attendees, both virtual 13
Collaborative Buzz and physical, can improve the overall effectiveness of meetings worldwide,” said American Express Meetings & Events vice president and general manager Issa Jouaneh. “Meetings organizers are challenged to reach critical audiences who do not attend in person. The creation of a virtual meetings strategy supported by policy can help companies identify the right opportunities to deploy such tools to drive engagement, reach a wider audience, capture content, and achieve the greatest return on investment and experience.”
Drug Deals: CVS and Cardinal Health in Supply Chain JV
There’s plenty of wheeling and dealing going on in the global drug wholesaling business. As reported in these pages previously, AmerisourceBergen has already partnered with Walgreen and Swiss drugstore chain Alliance Boots; and McKesson tried, but apparently failed, to buy the German drug wholesaler Celesio. Now, Cardinal Health has allied itself with CVS Caremark, the largest pharmacy provider in the United States, according to Reuters, Bloomberg, and other sources. Cardinal and CVS aim to create an equal partnership to source generic drugs, which will officially launch on July 1, 2014. The goal is for the two to buy drugs more cheaply, with a joint announcement saying that they “will collaborate with generic manufacturers to develop innovative supply chain and purchasing strategies.” One analyst told Reuters that “this JV will likely be one of the largest global buyers of generics on the planet now.” Another analyst, meanwhile, told Bloomberg that the deal should save the two companies between $450 million and $600 million a year. “The topic du jour is finding friends along the drug supply chain and looking for ways to add value,” said Jennifer Lynch, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, in an interview with Bloom14
berg. “You’re taking two parts of the supply chain and putting them together and we’re hopeful it also allows them in some way, shape, or form to get creative on the delivery side as well in terms of finding efficiencies.”
It’s a Carpet, and an LED Light: Philips and Desso Take the Floor
ASAP Corporate Member Royal Philips has announced a partnership agreement with carpet maker Desso to develop solutions that combine LED lighting with light-transmissive carpet. The idea behind this innovation is to further unlock the potential of LED integration into surfaces and add a little excitement to interior design and space planning, the companies said in a statement. The solution aims to transform the way people interact with information and their environment in offices, hotels, conference centers, and other public buildings. The LED light-emitting carpets should provide benefits in the areas of information, direction, inspiration, and safety, such as guiding people around buildings and toward safety exits; enhancing the interior ambiance of buildings by combining lighting and carpeting with design and color; and helping to declutter spaces by making information visible only when needed. The partnership is an agreement to work exclusively together in developing the markets in EMEA. In addition, a joint development agreement has been signed focusing on a seamless integration of the solution into new and existing buildings. The product name will be revealed in 2014 as part of the full go-to-market launch, but Philips and Desso say they are already working on pilot projects in key markets.
Lilly Partners with Project A.L.S.
ASAP Global Member Eli Lilly and Company has entered into an agreement with the nonprofit Project A.L.S. to accelerate the development of potential
therapies for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. As part of the agreement, Project A.L.S. will study molecules developed and studied preclinically by Lilly scientists for the treatment of cancer to assess their potential in the treatment of ALS. Research by Project A.L.S., a nonprofit aligned with leading academic medical institutes and key opinion leaders across the globe, and led by Columbia University professors Tom Maniatis and Thomas Jessell, has uncovered novel data that identified a critical role in ALS disease progression for several inflammatory signaling pathways that are also known to be associated with cancer. “The evidence demonstrating a potential role for these cancer-signaling pathways in the progression of ALS is compelling,” said Dr. Greg Plowman, vice president of oncology research at Lilly. “Lilly will provide well-characterized and selective molecules that we hope will help acc elerate the development of medicines for ALS.” Under the terms of the partnership, Project A.L.S. will select and screen molecules in Lilly’s oncology pipeline to establish whether these molecules show any therapeutic potential for ALS and inflammation. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Good Hands People: Allstate and ING in Alliance for Annuities
The Allstate Corporation and ING U.S. announced in December a strategic alliance that will enable Allstate to offer a full suite of fixed annuity product offerings issued by ING Companies to Allstate customers. The fixed annuity products are issued by ING USA Annuity and Life Insurance Company and ING Life Insurance and Annuity Company. “When Allstate Financial announced in July that we would no longer issue fixed annuities after 2013, we began searching Continued on page 38 Strategic Alliance Magazine
R E G U L A R
F E AT U R E
spotlight member
A Broader, More Aligned View A Revamped Alliance Practice Has Unisys Taking a Longer-Term, Strategic Approach to Partnerships By Jon Lavietes
WHEN DAN MURPHY TOOK OVER Unisys’s strategic alliances practice in early 2013, the technology industry was well into a major shift. Unisys, as it turns out, had completed a major transformation as well.
Unisys in a Flash The company had successfully can significantly advance Unisys’s transitioned through a period of $3.7 billion in revenues current and future product roadfinancial stabilization and portmap and revenue goals. Rather 22,500 employees folio rationalization designed than report to individual busiMore than 100 partnerships and alliances ness units, his team reports to the to capture emerging market opcompany’s worldwide marketing portunities and grow. Its alliance More than 10 global strategic alliances organization. This allows the team team needed to shift its philosoto take a broader strategic view of its alliances than in the past. phy to keep up with this ever-rapid pace of change. Prior to Murphy’s joining, the strategic alliance department was organized to support the needs of the Unisys business units, with a focus on product/solution portfolio enablement and field sales engagement. The alliance team was managed with a business unit–centric philosophy, which at times led to partner relationships that didn’t fully leverage organizational/product capabilities that cut across multiple Unisys business units. Over the past year, Unisys has transformed its alliance function to align across all business units and focus on strategic revenue growth. The company’s alliances are organized into four categories: 1) resellers, 2) technology/service partners, 3) go-to-market partners, and 4) truly strategic allies. As vice president of global alliances, Murphy (pictured above) emphasizes the last two categories, which he said encompass “the most relevant strategic alliance partners that can get us, and our customers, to the next level”—often global companies that Quarter 1, 2014
“If you’re organized by [business unit], and you’re focused on field-to-field, deal-based, quarter-by-quarter [execution] to drive opportunities, you’re really thinking about how to make something happen now versus how do I make something bigger happen in the future? It’s important, for sure, but you may not be able to effectively create a longer-term revenue growth strategy that benefits both the company and the alliance partner. Also, you’re duplicating resources across business units,” he said. “All of that gets eliminated when you bring the team together and take a global view, and you build processes and templates and all of the things you are doing across partners are done in a consistent way.”
A Three-Way Alignment According to Murphy, there are three keys to putting this philosophy into practice—partner, market, and organizational alignment. From a partner perspective, Murphy cites five 15
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critical components for getting allies on the same page: 1. Complementary goals, 2. Agreed-upon metrics, 3. Jointly developed action plans for achieving those metrics (e.g., revenue, pipeline, expansion into new markets, etc.), 4. Milestones, and 5. A shared investment to which both companies contribute. Attaining market alignment tests the strategic vision of each partnership’s appointed leader. Unisys’s partner ecosystem includes longtime IT stalwarts, such as Amazon, BMC, Dell, EMC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NetApp, SAP, and others. For a company that delivers a wide variety of software, hardware, and outsourcing services and solutions to customers in transportation, government, financial services, and other industries, these allies are critical to serving Unisys’s customer base. The processes, governance structures, and expectations associated with each of these partnerships are already well developed and have been refined over time. However, moving forward Unisys is placing bets on growth opportunities in emerging disruptive technology areas, such as cloud, cybersecurity, big data, mobility, and social media, and each of these areas represents ripe opportunities for partners, old and new. The organization is challenging each alliance leader to come up with a growth initiative that could either build on the existing partner base or involve an emerging player. “How you develop new solutions in each of these growth environments will determine which partners you need to be with, whether it’s your current portfolio, or whether it’s new companies. And we have a mix of both,” said Murphy. This dynamic could affect how resources are allocated across Unisys’s alliance portfolio, according to Murphy. “Let’s say we’re partnering with [a global corporation that is new to Unisys], and another partner we had is a major competitor, and that partner didn’t necessarily play in the new technology. You then might have some decisions on how to manage your portfolio and invest in one area, and divest in another, or segment the market in a way that provides benefits for both,” he said. Finally, organizational alignment is achieved if and when Unisys’s and the partner’s overarching goals are in unison. “What is the Unisys corporate strategy? How does the partner’s strategy fit with Unisys’s strategy? Do we have similar markets that we are trying to attack together? Can we build plans to go to market together?” explained Murphy. If the bigger-picture objectives match up, the partner organizations then have to align the aspirations of the partners’ respective marketing, sales, product, and channel divisions with the alliance’s action plans in a similar fashion. Quarter 1, 2014
The Metric System Each Unisys alliance is judged by metrics that correspond to the alliance’s particular goals. In 2014, Murphy said, the company will adopt many of the metrics included in The ASAP Handbook of Alliance Management. Although the metrics differ by partnership, they fall into four general categories: 1. Financial – revenue (from sell-through, sell-to, and sell-with collaborations), pipeline, joint sales 2. Go-to-market – success stories, references, press releases, trade shows and events, white papers, webcasts, brochures 3. Shared investment – market development funds, co-op funds, nondollar/in-kind benefits (training hours, equipment, jointly attended trade shows), real dollar investments (i.e., partner-funded specific activities) 4. Governance – quarterly business reviews, executive-toexecutive meetings with senior officials “of interest” (read: high-ranking), partner status/level at the partner organization (e.g., “Gold” Oracle PartnerNetwork certification) While it is widely accepted within the alliance management community that success stories and references are key, Murphy stressed that the other metrics in the “go-to-market” category are equally essential to achieving the goals of a collaboration. “They are all really designed to increase awareness of the value of the partnership, to drive interest, and to generate a qualified lead, which actually winds up in the sales pipeline,” he said. In addition to these partnership-level metrics, Murphy has instituted one designed to enhance his team’s knowledge of the sales cycle and competitive differentiation. “I am going to ask each one of our alliance leaders to actively engage with our business unit teams to participate in at least one full end-to-end deal in 2014,” he said. This may include creating and implementing a program, generating and qualifying a lead, putting it into the sales cycle, working with the Unisys and/or partner sales reps to pursue the opportunity, participating in relevant sales calls, crafting necessary proposals and collateral, and closing the deal itself. “The reason why I want my team to participate in that end-to-end cycle is so that they stay close to what our partners are seeing, what our field is seeing, and what our customers are demanding.”
Batter Up: Getting Alliance Managers to Swing for the Fences While Murphy’s sales cycle objective is aimed at helping his team keep an eye on the micro level, his bigger plan is to make sure they are actively painting Unisys’s big picture, too. Fortunately, Murphy has found that Unisys’s corporate culture will allow the alliance team not only to make an impact, but also to be recognized for their contributions. Continued on page 39 17
A Matter of Perspective
Misaligned Press Releases and Rogue Media Statements Can Make for Public-Facing Crises in an Alliance By Jon Lavietes 18
Strategic Alliance Magazine
FEW WOULD DISPUTE THAT JUST ABOUT ANY ALLIANCE will come with unforeseen challenges and tense moments over its lifespan. Fighting fires is tough enough internally, so imagine how much harder it is when the rough patches in your partnership become visible to the public at large. Press releases, news articles, and miscellaneous commentary in various public forums can often be breeding grounds for your alliance’s next crisis. Consider these far-from-unusual hypothetical scenarios: n A partner issues a press release announcing a partnership with a competitor without giving you a heads-up prior to its crossing the wire n A partner distributes an announcement specifically about your alliance without seeking your approval n Your partner commits a major mishap involving your joint offering, which ultimately affects your organization’s brand n An influential analyst or an opinion columnist from a major news outlet spreads a rumor or otherwise speculates openly about one of your alliances n A senior executive from a partner organization makes either misleading or disparaging remarks about your company
No Alliance Management Principles = Chaos Situations like these are even harder to contain if alliance management principles are not applied to these collaborations. In his role spearheading government relations and external affairs for health care technology company Abiomed several years ago, Ed Berger, director of Larchmont Strategic Advisors and a member of the advisory board for the PR firm Harris Communications Group, served as the de facto alliance manager for Abiomed’s partnership with six hospitals and their respective heart surgeons and PR department heads around a clinical trial of its groundbreaking AbioCor product, the world’s first completely self-contained replacement heart. The AbioCor trials were being followed closely by almost all of the world’s most influential news outlets, and a number of the hospitals and physicians were at least in part motivated by the opportunity to enhance their visibility and reputations. Thus, there were several instances of participating hospitals issuing unauthorized press releases, and doctors leaking confidential patient information through interviews that were not sanctioned by the appointed joint PR team. “Cardiothoracic surgeons as a class believe they are next to God,” said Berger, describing the difficulty he had keeping certain personalities toeing the partnership’s line. “They are used to making onthe-fly decisions and don’t easily ask permission. It was very hard [to prevent rogue behavior within the AbioCor alliance].” As Berger recounted the AbioCor initiative, one got the sense that Abiomed did not employ formal partner selection methods. At the Quarter 1, 2014
very least, Berger wished he had been more proactive in identifying potential loose cannons at the outset of the relationship.
“In retrospect, it was absolutely predictable which hospital would be much better at controlling the information, keeping to the agreement, and whether a particular doctor was more likely to go off the reservation.” “This goes from assessing the character and quality of your partner’s media group, [to] the personality of the physician and the goals of your partner organization. That wasn’t going to be foolproofed, but in retrospect—you can do the analysis retrospectively—you can say it was absolutely predictable which hospital would be much better at controlling the information, keeping to the agreement, and whether a particular doctor was more likely to go off the reservation,” he said. And if an alliance manager has not properly set up the operating model (governance, protocols, rules of escalation, etc.), or succeeded in preventing the organization from bypassing it, disputes not only get out of hand, they get resolved in the less-thancollaborative fashion that is not exactly preferred in the alliance management community. In a previous life heading up corporate marketing for a $2 billion– plus IT services provider, John DeSarbo, managing principal of channel strategy and management practice at sales and marketing consultancy ZS Associates, witnessed several instances of partners’ purposefully “going rogue.” In one example, the IT services firm had two strategic partners that were fierce competitors. One of the two partners coerced the IT service provider’s data center manager to be quoted in a case study touting its offerings as superior to its competitor’s in exchange for free products for that data center manager’s lab. In this instance, it was critically important that the IT service provider not publicly express a preference for one partner’s products over the other’s. Unfortunately, the offending partner bypassed the alliance manager, communications department, and corporate marketing team, and the case study ultimately made its way to the partner’s Web site. Needless to say, DeSarbo and the firm’s management were incensed—so much so that the company’s CEO reached out personally to his counterpart at the partner on a Friday to tell him, “‘If you 19
yelling or in any way contributing to any kind of undisciplined escalation. “You likely also need to help [your internal colleagues] understand the ways in which things like this can happen without intent, regardless of impact—to see it as a result of confusion or lack of discipline rather than malevolence, planned for, or in an intentional effort to go violate a well-understood agreement,” said Kliman.
Stuart Kliman, CA-AM, founding partner at Vantage Partners.
Brooke Paige, CSAP, principal of 7ContinentsCollaboration.
don’t pull that case study off your Web site and discontinue all associated marketing, we will end the alliance by end of day Monday,’” recalled DeSarbo. The case study was indeed removed, but those were not the only consequences. “I’m sure someone lost their job after that stunt,” he added.
Tempers Flaring? Time to Cool Everyone Off When situations like this arise, an alliance manager has a lot of communicating to do internally and externally. Placating your Clevel executives can go a long way in rectifying the situation. “It can be like the Marx Brothers at first. But when the senior management team was calm, everybody else could be called to be calm,” said Sean Andrews, managing partner at the public and investor relations firm Credible Strategic Advisors. Regardless of whether senior management is involved in the resolution, things can spin out of control quickly if the alliance professionals do not act fast. According to Stuart Kliman, CA-AM, founding partner at Vantage Partners, one does not need a high-level business manual to figure out what to do first.
“You have to make sure people internally aren’t starting to call others externally, yelling or in any way contributing to any kind of undisciplined escalation.” “I don’t think it’s super complicated. The alliance manager needs to call his co–alliance manager [at the partner company] and treat the issue as a joint problem to be resolved, caused by some kind of confusion about what is the agreed process or protocol,” he said. “You [also] have to try to see what kind of impact the announcement is having on people internally, and try to help manage that impact, making sure it doesn’t spin out of control and get worse. You have to make sure people internally aren’t starting to call others externally, 20
“When you’re talking through a partnership or alliance, it’s relatively safe when discussions are behind closed doors. When news of the alliance gets to the public, it suddenly gets real for a lot of people,” said DeSarbo. But as one might guess, it is imperative not to act rashly because you may find out that either your organization was partly at fault, or there was a reasonable misunderstanding on the partner’s part. “When a PR crisis occurs, I work to focus on the facts,” said Brooke Paige, CSAP, principal of the Boston-based consultancy 7ContinentsCollaboration. “It is important to verify how and to whom this information may have been communicated in your organization. You may personally have been surprised by this news, but is it possible someone else in your organization may have already known about it at one point?” “Sometimes there are missed expectations between two partners as to how PR is going to be handled. Sometimes it’s just poor planning that leads to challenges,” said DeSarbo.
Get Ducks in a Row, but Don’t Leave Your Partner Floating Aimlessly in the Pond If you can indeed verify that your side is not at fault, you will obviously have to align your organization before sharing your plans for dealing with the situation with the partner. But that does not mean it is best to keep your ally waiting indefinitely. After all, you do not want rogue communication to fester among your partner’s team because they are being kept in the dark. “Oftentimes when there is some sort of PR situation that has oc curred, partners may choose to hold that information quite closely. They will err on the side of not discussing it with the partner because they want to make sure they have an internal decision on what action to take before they communicate,” said Paige. “I actually encourage them to reach across to [their respective] partners right away and let them know what has happened, and that they are having a series of internal meetings to discuss it. It is important that the partner knows when a decision will be made on what action to take.” As the alliance team evaluates the potential ramifications of the situation, assessing whether and how to involve senior leadership is a true test of alliance management skills. “This is just another example of where alliance management is an art based on science,” said Paige. “My rule of thumb is if it Strategic Alliance Magazine
is something that will impact the structure of the deal in its nature, you are absolutely going to want to communicate to the CEO about that. If it could shift the structure of your agreement in some way, if it could impact your ability to access the resources that you needed out of the deal, you are going to want to communicate that to your organization.” John DeSarbo, managing principal And while the experiences Paige of channel strategy and management outlined are specific to biopharma, practice at sales and marketing alliance management tools are consultancy ZS Associates.
critical to managing the situation, regardless of industry. Kliman issued the reminder that the governance structure, particularly the steering committee, is constructed for circumstances like this. “What do each of the partners need to bring back into their broader organizations to make sure that the alliance is not negatively impacted?” said Kliman, summarizing one of the primary purposes of the governance committee meeting in this situation. “The alliance manager shouldn’t be trying to do this alone. It’s a question of, how do we work together?”
Balancing Alliance Management and Corporate Communications’ Interests
The Playbook for Common PR Snafus There is no one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with an er rant press release or wayward external communication, but certain situations tend to recur on the public-facing side of alliances. A few experts talk about the common individual scenarios that crop up to bedevil alliance managers. Situation: Partner Inks Deal with Competitor Without Notifying Your Organization “Personally, I have been in that position, and it’s horrible. It’s the worst possible thing you could experience because here you are trying to represent the alliance in the best terms to your senior executives, and here you are just learning in real time [about] something that can potentially cannibalize or impact what you are expecting to get from that deal,” said Paige. “If it’s a situation where you have a development plan in the exact same area with another company, and you have a therapeutic product coming out in that same category, we just want to make sure that resources aren’t being taken off of one deal and allocated to another. We would ask the partner to comment on that.”
In many cases, a formal response, whether through a press release and/or interviews with journalists and analysts, will be necessary. While it is critical to contact the partner immediately to find out what is going on, or to at least let them know when you will be taking action, you may need to take the opposite approach with reporters and analysts, depending on the situation. You do not necessarily want to rush to answer a phone call from a news outlet until your organization has developed appropriate messaging for its external communication.
Situation: Journalists and Analysts Spread Rumors
“At first, you don’t pick up the phone. You’re not reachable until you can become aligned. Stray bullets are more dangerous than well-aimed bullets,” said Andrews.
PR folks have said, ‘I’ve seen this come out in the news.
It is common practice for companies to vet all media requests through their corporate communications departments. It is also standard to limit reporter access to approved organization spokespeople who have been briefed on company messaging and formally “media trained” to answer journalists’ and analysts’ questions. But as easy as that sounds, people do not always exercise good judgment in a crisis. Andrews recalled a story from his days managing investor relations for Medicis Pharmaceutical in which several reporters showed up at the company’s headquarters. One of the company’s vice presidents became unnerved by the newspersons’ unexpected physical presence, insisting Quarter 1, 2014
Not Based on Information from You or Your Partner “You don’t want to be alarmist, but the role of the alliance manager is to identify and mitigate risk, and look for additional value. When you hear things that could impact your ability to do that in either direction, you are going to want to consider it and potentially communicate it [to your PR people],” said Paige. “There have been several times where What do you think is fueling it? Because the last time we checked with you and partner X, the facts of the situation were very different.’” “I will always say it’s a fool’s errand to comment [on] rumors,” said Andrews. “I had [Wall Street analysts] actually call me up about [a bogus rumor concerning a potential acquisition]. They said, ‘This is the rumor. This [other] company commented [on a similar rumor]. Why don’t you comment?’ I said, ‘This is a perfect example. A week from now when the rumor is they’re talking to another com21
that Medicis did not have a process for such a situation. Andrews reminded him that they did—all communications had to go through then vice president of investor and public relations Kara Stancell, now a fellow managing partner at Credible Strategic Advisors with Andrews, and she was unavailable at the time. “As soon as I said it, you could see the light bulb go off. We would send corporate-wide reminders [of the corporate communications policy] if something happened, positive [or] negative, but people forget under pressure,” said Andrews. “Media were in the parking lot, but our media spokesperson was unavailable.”
“I will always say it’s a fool’s errand to comment [on] rumors,” said Andrews. Just as important, alliance managers have to let the public relations professionals do their jobs—and trust the PR team’s judgment. When emotions are running high, people outside the corporate communications department might assume the logical course of action is to respond immediately with a public statement, but nonaction is frequently the better decision, particularly when it comes to baseless rumors circulating in the press or analyst community. “There’s just so much noise right now, a lot of times the answer is not to react quickly. Just let it sit. Then deal with the problems through one-on-one discussions as opposed to broadcasting some sort of response. Public responses have a way of fueling the flames,” said DeSarbo. (See sidebar, “The Playbook for Common PR Snafus.”) Of course, that does not mean that the alliance management team should not give their input, nor is anyone implying that the corporate communications group should not consult the alliance manager. Andrews recalled a time when Medicis did not want to disclose information on a topic, but its smaller partner wanted publicity to raise cash. Andrews and Stancell listened to the alliance manager, and ultimately to the partner, and then worked carefully with senior management to find a mutually acceptable solution.
Experienced alliance managers say, “Here is something we’ve learned over time is a big issue. Let’s make sure as we start this new alliance we have a way of managing that.” “We had to find a way to marry those two interests together,” he said. “We have to find some agreeable space somewhere where we can minimize the [potential] damage perhaps, or maybe in that alliance we come up with a solution that is so unique it actually sidesteps both issues altogether.” 22
An Ounce of Prevention Averts an Intervention Although an organization cannot eliminate the possibility of a public relations mishap entirely, there are many ways to mitigate it. “There needs to be formal agreement between two different alliance partners as to how an announcement will be approved. By whom? What’s the governance around PR? All of that should be written into an alliance agreement,” said DeSarbo. And where DeSarbo advises firms to address PR in their alliance agreements, others in the profession have found that clear operating principles can guide the alliance in the absence of contract language. Of course, this puts the onus on the organization to follow these protocols. Your counterpart could be the determining factor in whether it will be able to bottle up rogue communication and unsanctioned press releases. “It depends on the remit of the other alliance manager. Is he or she able to reach into other parts of the organization? By definition, these impacts come from areas which are surprising—areas which are beyond the initial circle of the alliance manager, probably,” said Kliman. He added that the “alliance manager can reach out to those broader areas and see if they can make them a little more aware of the need to communicate with this partner before announcements are coming down. I don’t think there’s any magic to it.” Furthermore, according to Kliman, industries such as IT that have seen these scenarios play out often should have no excuse for not having prepared for this eventuality. “Most alliance managers and most big companies, particularly IT companies, would say, ‘Here is something we’ve learned over time is a big issue. Let’s make sure as we start this new alliance we have a way of managing that,’” he said. “Then separately, even if you haven’t done that, to the extent it happens once, it’s likely to happen twice.” In some respects, thinking of your partners in your PR dealings goes well beyond the individual alliance managers and is an organizational culture issue. “The issue is probably less one of the alliance manager, and more of whether or not the organization itself has come to grips with the fact that it depends on alliances to succeed, that it’s alliance-centric, that a large part of its business model is working within the context of this ecosystem—and generally having the leadership that is constantly preaching the need to be thinking about these crossecosystem impacts,” said Kliman.
Plant Seeds of Trust, Identify Bad Seeds Early Although no alliance practice or corporate communications team could ever guarantee an alliance that is free from public-facing crises, Stancell believed investing in the relationships among and between each partner’s alliance managers and PR professionals Strategic Alliance Magazine
built the chemistry needed to guide partnerships through turbulent episodes of this nature. She said Medicis PR and alliance executives would meet weekly with their respective counterparts at partner organizations, even just to talk casually. If team members happened to be traveling to the partner’s area for work, they would make sure to spend the evening together while everyone was in town. “We would go out for dinner, drinks, whatever, just to catch up on personal lives. We were friends. We were partners. And we trusted each other with our particular communications,” she said. “We tried to stay in front of that by having that one-on-one relationship with that alliance manager.” “By fostering those relationships, we were proactively building bridges that when communications were—I hate to say breaking down—but strained perhaps between the respective legal teams or senior management, we always had an open door and could keep things open and looped together,” said Andrews.
pany, and they in fact are, now they’re stuck because if they don’t comment, they just commented.’” Situation: Smaller Partner Publishes Case Study Without Your Company’s Consent “There was a small software company that was partnering with our $2 billion–plus IT services firm to deliver a solution to our joint customer. The software company wrote a case study describing that project and partnership with our firm and posted it prominently on their Web site. After a while, the customer became very frustrated and disenchanted with the software company and decided to replace the solution that was developed, but that [software] company was still touting the success and the case study of the work we’d done together. Essentially they were trying
Although it was difficult to rein in the allies in the AbioCor partnership, Berger was infinitely more successful in keeping his colleagues from overreacting to each act of malfeasance.
to strengthen their brand by associating it with our brand
“You earn compliance by effective performance and internal communications over time. I never had in three years—and believe me there were many people in various stages of upset over these kinds of issues—I never once had those out-of-control rogue communications from my company’s personnel. The reason was that I had given people good reason to believe that if they came and vented to me, number one, I would make some reasonable communication to try to fix things and I would get back to them. They weren’t left hanging—that something bad had happened and there had been no consequences. At the end of the day…they knew that the communication that they wanted to make in anger had been made, and they heard what the result had been, and they realized that it hadn’t done further damage to the relationship,” he said.
site. Can you help us remove this case study?’” said DeSarbo.
Alliance Manager as Conductor
sue? What is the underlying cause of that breakdown? That’s
Although it is a safe bet the corporate communications department will instantly jump into action when a problem press release crosses the wire or a potentially harmful statement is made in the press, alliance managers still need to be proactive and use their core orchestrator skills.
purely the alliance manager’s role. We need to be coordinat-
“They need to identify the right people, figure out what conversations need to be had among them, design those conversations, facilitate those conversations to get the issue resolved. It’s very unlikely that they will be the resolver. I think it will be very likely that they will be the owner of the issue from an ensuring-it-getsresolved point of view,” said Kliman. Indeed, it’s a matter of perspective. Because these are crises the whole world can see. n Quarter 1, 2014
and the customer’s brand. The customer came to us and said, ‘We don’t want to promote this company on their Web “In this case, a few phone calls to our alliance manager resolved the issue. The implication of us not working with them again was a big enough stick to wave to get them to take the case study off their site.” Situation: Chief Executive of Partner Organization Disparages You Publicly “There’s always a reason why if there’s that sort of emotion in describing a situation. It’s really our goal and our obligation to figure out what that is and fix it,” said Paige. “How real is this? Is it a positioning issue? Is it a communication is-
ing that and communicating the outcome. “[The solution] might be as simple as communication flow—making sure that the key people responsible for that area in the organization have the information that they need,” she continued. “For instance, maybe we took the expected action, but it wasn’t communicated in the way the partner was looking for. Therefore, it wasn’t communicated in the larger organization. That’s an important thing to point out, especially in a dynamic where it’s a smaller company working with a much larger global organization.” 23
The Control-Trust Dilemma Finding the Right Balance Makes It Easier to Arrive at an Effective Alliance Design By Ard-Pieter de Man
COMPANIES CAN ADOPT ONE OF two basic approaches when designing their alliances: the control view and the trust view. Figure 1 summarizes the two views by reviewing the assumptions behind each, how they define the key challenge for alliance design, and their effect on the prescriptions provided for how alliances should be designed.
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Strategic Alliance Magazine
The Control View: Taming Opportunism The control view makes the assumption that partners in an alliance join the alliance because of their self-interest. Therefore, they will see the alliance as a vehicle to promote their own good, without much regard for their partner’s interests. The most important challenge in designing alliances is to create safeguards against opportunistic behavior. This view of alliances was epitomized by a controller of a pharmaceutical company, who described his job in an internal alliance conference as, “I am here to protect us from our partners.” Opportunism in alliances may come in different forms. Often, such actions are small, such as investing slightly less time than the partner does, thus shifting some of the burden to the partner. Sometimes such actions are significant, as in the case of the Danone and Wahaha joint venture. The two partners jointly brought a Danone drink on the market in China. Wahaha, however, took the Danone recipe and also started to secretly produce the drink under its own brand. This view of alliances underlines American writer Ambrose Bierce’s definition of an alliance in international politics from his notorious Devil’s Dictionary as “the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.” The possibility that a partner will engage in opportunistic behavior and free-riding based on self-interest defines the control view of strategic alliances. This view leads to an emphasis on using formal mechanisms in alliance design. The first element is defining commonly agreed-on targets with a partner to ensure that both partners are on the same page regarding what they want to achieve. Making these targets measurable is the first safeguard against conflicts of interest. Clear definition of targets is important, and an extensive planning and control system that measures deviations from the plan, reports progress, and highlights areas for improvement directly follows the target-setting process. Targets may also be set for the inputs that both partners have to deliver to the alliance to ensure that investments are reasonably shared. The focus on targets immediately raises the question of how the benefits will be shared once a target is achieved. Control-based alliances tend to have detailed value appropriation mechanisms in place, clarifying exactly which revenues and costs belong to whom. This clarification is achieved by the use of Quarter 1, 2014
FIGURE 1: The control and the trust approach to alliance design CONTROL Alliance assumption
Partners look out for their own self-interests Conflicts of interest are likely to arise
Alliance design Prevent opportunism challenge View on Target driven alliance design Value appropriation Rule based; detailed contracts Extrinsic motivation Strong senior management control
TRUST Partners benefit from a common interest Joint growth and development ensure long-term alignment Build social capital Vision driven Value creation Principle based; norms and values Intrinsic motivation Senior management as coach
many detailed rules to govern the alliance. Elaborate contracts are implemented to cover as many eventualities as possible. An alliance may be open-ended by definition, but the control view sees incomplete contracts as a negative. The contractual space needs to be reduced as much as possible to ensure that—in case of a conflict—the solution to that conflict is completely clear. Senior management up to the board level needs to deal with any remaining issues during the course of the lifetime of the alliance. Therefore, senior management is closely connected to the alliance and provides it with active guidance. If necessary, they will even intervene in alliance operations to ensure that the company’s interests are well looked after.
In short, [control-based] alliances highly rely on extrinsic motivation: sticks and carrots guide the alliance in the right direction, not the personal responsibility that someone feels to contribute to it. To stimulate both sides to collaborate, their targets are connected to bonuses and payoffs based on alliance performance. Thus, control thinking extends to the individuals who comprise the alliance. People are rewarded when they behave in accordance with alliance targets. In short, alliances highly rely on extrinsic motivation: sticks and carrots guide the alliance in the right direction, not the personal responsibility that someone feels to contribute to it. Structures and systems are in the lead. 25
This type of thinking also has an effect on the level of the individuals working in alliances. Instead of attempting to align their behavior using targets and bonuses, the trust approach seeks to create a psychological contract with an individual. The Trust View: Building Social Capital Whereas the control view departs from the self-interest of partners to join an alliance, the starting point for the trust view is common interest. Although these are two sides of the same coin, the implications for alliance design are profound. The shift in focus from conflict prevention to joint growth entails a completely different view of alliance design. As long as partners are able to identify new opportunities for growth and development, partners’ interests will be aligned and the collaboration should be stable. To continually identify these new opportunities, companies must get to know each other, be willing to share their ideas and insights openly, and foster a dynamic culture in the alliance. Doing so requires a high level of social capital; that is, people need to know and trust one another. In the trust view, the challenge is to design an alliance that fosters the social bonds between organizations that are needed to build that social capital. One way to build these bonds is by developing a joint vision for the alliance. Rather than setting narrow targets, the concept is that companies discuss a broader set of issues. Developing the vision for an alliance demands
“Well, honestly, Doc… I’m not sure you can help me with my trust issues.” 26
that organizations exchange their views on long-term developments in their market and how the alliance fits into those views. These discussions enhance mutual understanding and provide greater certainty to a partner’s intentions, thus reducing the chance that a partner takes unexpected actions. The emphasis on growth and development also leads to an emphasis on value creation. By learning and innovating, an alliance can continue to add value to its partners. The well-known distinction between sharing and growing the pie applies. In the control view, the emphasis is on sharing the pie; in the trust view, the emphasis is on growing it. If the partners can ensure that the pie continues to grow, a natural incentive exists for partners to stay in the alliance and to avoid behaving opportunistically and killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Sufficient value is created for everybody to earn a living. Because too many rules stifle innovation and creativity, trust-based alliances do not define detailed regulations for what should happen under certain circumstances. Instead, they focus on behavior, such as how the partners should behave when something happens that requires their joint attention. In the design of alliances, such an approach leads to an emphasis on norms and values that support mutual adjustment. An increasing number of alliances implement codes of conduct to that effect. Instead of laying out detailed rules, the concept is that an alliance is more flexible when it is based on certain principles that dictate how partners deal with one another, rather than attempting to cover every possible option in a lengthy contract. This type of thinking also has an effect on the level of the individuals working in alliances. Instead of attempting to align their behavior using targets and bonuses, the trust approach seeks to create a psychological contract with an individual. Through an appealing vision of what the alliance can mean in its market, employees are positively motivated to contribute. Fun, recognition, and meaningful work tie the partner companies together through their employees. An example is the Future Store Initiative, in which 50 partners collaborated to build a supermarket of the future. The vision was appealing for all involved. The collaboration made room for a variety of new ideas and experiments, which generated energy in the partnering companies and their employees. A memorandum of understanding of only two pages was signed. The trustbased mechanisms of joint vision, value creation, and intrinsic motivation took care of the rest. Strategic Alliance Magazine
If an alliance succeeds in building social capital in this way, elaborate planning and control processes are not needed. When both sides of an alliance automatically do what is in their joint and individual interests, the alliance should run smoothly. Senior management involvement can be limited to a coaching role. For example, they can help remove barriers to the alliance or think along with alliance managers about next steps. In short, the trust approach builds on the informal elements of alliance design. It is able to do so given the emphasis on growth and development that should guarantee that the alliance is not only beneficial to the partners at its inception, but also continues to add value over time.
Balancing Control and Trust Obviously, the previous description is somewhat black and white in nature. Many shades of gray exist in between. However, that all alliances end up in the middle is certainly not true. In fact, some alliances clearly depart from one perspective and have completely different alliance designs than when the opposite point of departure is taken. Both alliance types can be successful. Control is not necessarily better than trust or vice versa. Some people have an instinctive preference for one or the other. Accountants and lawyers tend to like the control approach; entrepreneurs usually have a preference for the trust approach. However, the real issue is to find the right design in the right situation. Thinking that everyone will always be intrinsically motivated to contribute to an alliance is just as naïve as believing that having a good contract in place will in itself ensure the success of the alliance. The point is to custom design an alliance. Control and trust may strengthen each other. A discussion about all of the issues that may call for greater control can help strengthen the understanding between the partners. Clarity on each other’s perspective regarding the alliance may help build trust. Trust may make it easier to share concerns and, as a result, formal rules may be agreed on to alleviate these concerns. In this way, trust may strengthen control. The concepts of control and trust may be intuitively clear, but their practical application is less straightforward. Each approach has its limits. Although having a high level of trust may sound ideal, the downside may be that the attention paid to the goals of the alliance may diminish when a partnership becomes too intimate. Groupthink may lead alliance partners to ignore or Quarter 1, 2014
downplay changes in the environment, putting the alliance at risk. A formal control mechanism ensures that alliance partners ask the right questions about their business and help maintain their focus on the goals. In contrast, placing too much emphasis on control may undermine employees’ identification with the alliance and the mutual adjustments necessary for effective alliance operations. Processes, procedures, and contracts do not make an alliance. People need to be willing to invest in the alliance, which requires that they form a psychological bond with it. When people identify with the goals of the alliance, the alliance will operate more smoothly.
Each approach clearly has its limits.… In an alliance that aims to create economies of scale, trust may be ineffective. In alliances aimed at innovation, control will be counterproductive. Each approach clearly has its limits. An overly heavy emphasis on control will reduce flexibility and creativity in an alliance. It may induce people to focus on the rules instead of the goals. Moreover, the costs of governing the alliance will be high. In contrast, significant emphasis on trust may lead to a loss of focus and lower operational efficiency, and may provide no explicit mechanism to correct free-riding and opportunism. In an alliance that aims to create economies of scale, trust may be ineffective. In alliances aimed at innovation, control will be counterproductive. Therefore, one of the most fundamental questions that needs to be answered when designing an alliance is: What is the right balance between control and trust given the specific aims this alliance seeks to achieve? Based on detailed case studies of more than a dozen alliances, the general guidelines are easy to identify. More control is necessary when alliance size increases and the partner-related risk is higher (e.g., when collaborating with a competitor). When business risk is high, as in a fast-changing environment, trust is called for because detailed contracts are counterproductive in such a situation. In practice, however, companies face a mix of these elements. In that case, fine-tuning the alliance by taking into account all elements of alliance design is necessary. These include clarity on the strategic imperatives of the Continued on page 39 27
Our Place in the Sun The Alliance Management Community Will Gather and “Pass the Talking Stick� in Arizona This March By Michael Burke
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2014 ASAP GLOBAL ALLIANCE SUMMIT PREVIEW A CASINO IN THE DESERT (BUT NOT LAS VEGAS)? “Un-conference” sessions? A marshmallow contest? Golf and spring training baseball? Is this the ASAP Global Alliance Summit? Never fear. Your friends, colleagues, peers, and present and future alliance partners will all be descending on the greater Phoenix area in March for the kind of programming, professional development, and networking opportunities ASAP members and alliance folks have come to expect and appreciate from the Summit. But there’s no harm in shaking it up a little, right?
experts in alliance management for those who are earning their stripes in the profession and looking to start or keep their careers on the right trajectory.
This year’s Summit will be held March 10–13 at the Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., right next to Phoenix and close to an abundance of springtime-in-the-desert activities—many of them right on the Talking Stick property, which itself boasts a casino, multiple restaurants and watering holes, a spa, fitness center, and live entertainment, among other alluring draws. And in addition to golf and other outdoor pursuits, the Phoenix area plays host to several Major League Baseball teams that play their spring training games nearby.
Speaking of experts, this Summit is full of them. And Monday afternoon will feature a first: an introductory training course for new alKeynote Speaker: Lisa Caswell, liance managers, presented president of Siemens e-Meter by two of the pioneers in the field from ASAP Global Member Eli Lilly and Company. The course, called “Introduction to Alliance Management Workshop: Tools and Techniques,” is a distillation of Lilly’s decades of business alliance experience and will be led by a couple of the most highly respected alliance managers and thought leaders in the profession: David S. Thompson, CA-AM, chief alliance officer at Lilly, and Steven E. Twait, CSAP, Lilly’s senior director of alliance management. (This workshop also carries an additional fee. A special thank- you to Lilly which is donating all materials, IP, and instructor time for the course.)
But the attractions of this year’s Summit don’t just reside in the unique venue and its warm and friendly environs. Several new additions to the conference program for 2014 promise to enliven and enhance the usual high value associated with the year’s premier alliance management event. These include a fascinating keynote speaker with highly relevant experience and advice for alliance managers, a first-ever introduction to alliance management workshop presented by some of the profession’s pioneers, the “Marshmallow Challenge” (we can’t tell you exactly what it is, but we have it on good authority that it involves music, prizes, some real-life lessons in collaboration, and...marshmallows!), and a half-day track on IT channel management put on by some of high tech’s leading lights.
The attractions of this year’s Summit don’t just reside in the unique venue and its warm and friendly environs.
Sunday, Monday
Applicable to alliance management novices in any industry, the “Introduction to Alliance Management Workshop” will provide never-before-published case studies, tools, and techniques that are used in alliance management training at Lilly. At a minimum, participants will come out with a working knowledge of alliance management, including the start-up, maintenance, and winding down of alliances, as well as an understanding of how to get the most value from This year, Monday marks the official start a collaboration. In addition, they will have the opportunity to participate in a presession discusof the Summit program, and will feature sion and survey and will receive a set of “battleboth main conference content and spetested” alliance management tools, as well as cial sessions, some by invitation only for taking part in a postsession follow-up with the ASAP global and chapter leaders and instructors. This session is an invaluable mustsome available for an additional fee. The attend for those who are new to alliances and latter includes both CA-AM and CSAP certification prep workshops given by MARCH 10-13, 2014 SCOTTSDALE alliance management. But to begin at the beginning: On Sunday, March 9, pre-Summit activities commence with alliance team meetings and ASAP committee meetings. Sunday, we’ve found from experience, is always a nice day to get in early, check out the hotel’s charms and enticements, explore the local area, and meet up with your alliance partners and friends.
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2014 ASAP GLOBAL ALLIANCE SUMMIT PREVIEW Monday evening there will be a peer-to-peer meet-up, a no-host event in which Summit participants can get together, have a drink and dinner, and head out to explore the sights and sounds of the local area if they wish.
Tuesday: Alliance Managers Leading the Charge Tuesday’s activities begin promptly at 8:15 a.m. with the opening of the general session, highlighted by this year’s keynote address, “Leading the Charge: How Partnering Prepared Me to Become a Corporate Division President,” by Lisa Caswell, president of Siemens e-Meter. Caswell’s is a success story that is becoming more common as partnering is seen as increasingly critical to the business world. Her background in alliance development and sales gave her a chance to see and learn all aspects of the business, and she parlayed that experience into her current role as president of Siemens’s e-Meter business, which is now driving toward complete integration with the Siemens Smart Grid Division. Caswell will share why and how her ability to create partnering-led businesses and to collaborate internally and externally has opened doors for her—the doors to the executive suite, in this case—and how partnering experience can create similar opportunities for alliance managers who have, as this year’s Summit theme states, “the expertise to collaborate and the leadership to perform.” Other noteworthy sessions on tap for Tuesday include “Mastering the Message: The Art of Expert Communication,” presented by Bart Queen, CEO of Speak America and founder of the Ultimate Strategic Speaking System; a panel that will discuss “The Right Person for the Job: Hiring Your Alliance Workforce”; and sessions on such topics as learning alliances, cobranded alliances, and cross-functional alliance organizations.
tegic Approach to the Alliance Portfolio,” presented by Scott Musson, vice president of global strategic alliances at Red Hat, Lorin Coles, CSAP, CEO of Alliancesphere, and Jeff Shuman, CSAP, principal at The Rhythm of Business; and “Inflection Points: Optimizing Your Alliance Amid Life Cycle Challenges,” presented by Ron McRae, CSAP, director of alliance management at Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, and Janice Babia Ramos, CSAP, director of alliance management at Janssen Biotech Inc. Finally, Leona Helverson, CSAP, and Karen Robinson, CSAP, from ASAP Global Member Verizon will present “Doing a 180: Partner Today, Channel Partner Tomorrow!,” which looks at new roles and skills for alliance managers involved in sales distribution programs.
Wednesday: Changing the Channel The channel in IT will also be the focus of an all-new half-day track on Wednesday. This track will include “The VAR Debate: Nontraditional Partnerships in IT,” a panel moderated by ASAP New England chapter president Frank Curran, director of business development and alliances at SUSE, and featuring Greg Fox, CSAP, director of the Citrix Ready Partner Program, and Gavin Miller, vice president and general manager of sales and marketing solutions for Avnet Technology Solutions. The panel will look at two different approaches to these evolving nontraditional technology alliances.
Two sessions will look at optimizing alliances and alliance portfolios: “Right Partners, Right Strategy: Taking a Stra-
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2014 ASAP GLOBAL ALLIANCE SUMMIT PREVIEW Another session in this track will be “Changing the Channel: Succeeding as a Channel Manager in the Age of SaaS and SMAC,” presented by Norma Watenpaugh, CSAP, founding principal of Phoenix Consulting Group (and leader of the editorial team that created The ASAP Handbook of Alliance Management, third edition), and Dede Haas, CA-AM, channel sales strategist for DLH Services, LLC. This special double session is an interactive mini-workshop that will explore how to make it as a channel manager in today’s IT world, where traditional hardware and software channels are at a crossroads and SaaS (software as a service) and SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, and cloud) technologies present new challenges and opportunities for profitable, sustainable channel relationships.
Alliance Enablement by Design Other Wednesday highlights include “Getting Up to Speed Together: Sales Team Collaboration and Alliance Enablement,” presented by Gerald J. Dehkes, CSAP, and David Erlenborn, CSAP, of KPMG LLP; a strategic view of alliance scorecards by R. Lynn Richard, CA-AM, of Unisys; a panel discussion on smart cities and smarter partnering led by ASAP BeNeLux chapter president Annick de Swaef, CA-AM, of Consensa Consulting; a session on pursuing alliances and joint ventures in China by Manlio Huacuja, CA-AM, of LoJack Corporation and Frank Grams of Sanofi; and a presentation on alliance design by Professor Ard-Pieter de Man, CSAP, of VU University Amsterdam—who literally wrote the book on it! (See story, page 24.) Wednesday afternoon will conclude with a general
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session and the not-to-be-missed 2014 ASAP Alliance Excellence Awards ceremony, where the best of the best in alliance management from the past year will be recognized and lauded. Did your company win this year? Will one of your partners wear the laurels? You’ll want to be on hand to find out. From there, Wednesday’s activities will shift into a smoother, softer, Barry White sort of gear—with a “Sunset Celebration,” complete with food, beverages, music, and of course, networking with your alliance friends and peers. Plan on staying around for the Wednesday evening fun and frolic, and to wrap up those continuing conversations with partners old and new.
To the Summit! That marks the end of most of the “official” Summit activities—but Thursday the CSAP exam will be given for those who have done their prep work for this highest level of alliance management certification, and there are a variety of options for folks to take part in an “Arizona Outing” (if you selected that option during your registration, you’ll be contacted by ASAP staff with excursion choices available for an additional fee). So before you head off into the Arizona night—or the warm desert sunlight beckoning with golf, baseball, and other outdoor adventures—make sure you’ve made the most of your Summit experience this year, both in conference sessions and outside. And remember, the Summit won’t be the same without your presence—so we’ll see you in Scottsdale! For registration information for the 2014 ASAP Global Alliance Summit, visit www.strategic-alliances.org right away and click on the Summit banner ad on the right—or contact Michele Shannon at +1-781-562-1630 ext. 204 or mshannon@strategic-alliances.org. March is almost here, so don’t wait!
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E D I T O R I A L
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By Rachelle E. Hawkins, CA-AM, Joanna L. C. May, CA-AM, David S. Thompson, CA-AM, and Steven E. Twait, CSAP
While the origins of effective individual leadership can be a source of lively debate, our experience has made it clear that great alliance managers are made, not born. This conclusion is inevitable due in large part to the unique nature of alliance management—a composite discipline that requires skills from a range of functions, including project management, human resources, finance, engineering, IT, and business development. Along with experience in these areas, successful alliance managers must possess—and learn to apply strategically—a comprehensive combination of interpersonal, professional, and alliance-specific competencies.
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For new and seasoned practitioners alike, the good news is that these skills can be acquired, applied, and enhanced over time to achieve the alliance manager’s ultimate goal: superior business results for the partnership.
Model Good Behavior In many cases, alliance managers first join the profession with a wealth of expertise in a specific function or discipline. While valuable, this experience must be augmented with additional alliance management–focused competencies for it to be useful in managing a business partnership. This process can be compared to creating an alloy, in which certain elements are combined to form a substance more useful than the primary components. Pure silver is soft and pliable, for example, but adding copper produces sterling silver, a stronger compound better suited for jewelry making. Likewise, if an alliance manager’s business background and expertise is alloyed with alliance management competencies, the result will be a more durable, professional alliance manager who can maximize alliance value and minimize alliance risk. With this in mind, we have observed and documented what we believe to be the essential knowledge,
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skills, and capabilities necessary to be successful in an alliance management role. Over time, we have structured this information into the Alliance Management Competency Model (AMCM), which we use to provide an orientation and roadmap for individuals new to our group. The AMCM, described in the following paragraphs, also is useful for annual competency planning and staff development for more experienced alliance managers. As you can see in the figure below , alliance management competencies can be divided into two key categories: operational and foundational. Operational competencies focus on what needs to be accomplished; foundational competencies encompass how an alliance manager can best carry out the responsibilities of the role.
Deliver the Basics Well Our key operational competencies define what an alliance manager needs to do—and do well—to manage an alliance or collaboration. Operational competencies often result in a discrete deliverable such as an alliance start-up meeting agenda or governance meeting record. The alliance
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KEY OPERATIONAL COMPETENCIES Develop Potential Alliances – Advise the deal team and leadership on potential risks and opportunities, assess a potential partner during the due diligence process, advise on contract development, and design governance for new alliances. (See “Governance by Design: How Well-Established Principles and Practices Set the Stage for Alliance Success,” Strategic Alliance Magazine, Q3 2012.) Form Alliances – Facilitate planning meetings during alliance organization and orchestrate kickoff activities. (See “Good to Go: How Setting the Right Tone, Goals, and Expectations Gets a Great Alliance Going,” Strategic Alliance Magazine, Q4 2012.) Manage Ongoing Alliances – Monitor alliance value proposition, implement alliance governance, formally and informally monitor and manage alliance health, and execute interventions to support any alliance transitions. (See “Steady as She Goes: How Focus, Discipline Help an Alliance Stay on Course,” Strategic Alliance Magazine, Q1 2013.) Facilitate Alliance Changes – Identify and implement any alliance restructuring and manage corresponding contract modifications, including terminations. Build Partner Knowledge – Understand the alliance partner’s business, articulate the partner’s needs, serve as an internal advocate when appropriate, and use lessons learned to improve alliance performance and health. manager must learn to anticipate decision points and plan for all aspects of developing, forming, managing, and if necessary, restructuring or terminating alliances. Additionally, it is critical to learn the alliance partner’s business, articulate the partner’s needs, and serve as an advocate for your company’s internal needs when appropriate.
Move from Average to Exceptional Foundational competencies define how an alliance manager executes operational competencies. Although this is a more difficult category to structure, especially given the wide range of personalities and experiences involved, it is possible to frame a discussion that describes the approaches and professional qualities that most often result in a successful alliance management effort. Simply stated, a mastery of foundational competencies will elevate an alliance manager from average to exceptional. For example, a great alliance manager will go beyond identifying a particular task to be accomplished and will: — Demonstrate enhanced vision, judgment, and influence Quarter 1, 2014
to evaluate a task in the context of human and business risk as well as legal uncertainty — Identify potential outcomes — Achieve a result that balances maximizing alliance value with minimizing alliance risk This approach also cultivates trust, loyalty, and commitment between alliance managers and their clients, helping to achieve positive alliance outcomes time and time again. Throughout the alliance life cycle, foundational competencies enable an alliance manager to identify, prevent, and mitigate risk. Competencies that will reduce the three basic categories associated with an alliance—human risk, business risk, and legal uncertainty—are described below.
Competencies that reduce human risk: — Working knowledge of basic human psychology, including character traits of various personalities, types of
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misinterpretations that are common in alliances, and conflict management skills and techniques (see “For Better or Worse: How Understanding Personality Traits Can Help You Effectively Mitigate and Manage Alliance Conflict,” Strategic Alliance Magazine, Q2 2012) — Deep understanding of how to provide coaching and feedback to peers, subordinates, and superiors — Ability to conduct an alliance health survey and to design meaningful interventions that address identified issues — Working knowledge of basic consulting skills — Continued investigation of organizational psychology surrounding the design of alliance and company incentives
Competencies that reduce business risk: — Deep knowledge of key business organizations within both partner companies — Understanding of the allied product’s strategy, tactics, and life cycle plan — Deep understanding of how the organizations set strategy, find and license new products, and manage relationships — Knowledge of basic types and structures of contracts, terms, negotiations, and commercialization archetypes
Competencies that reduce legal uncertainty: — Ability to take effective meeting minutes (see “Making the Minutes Count: The Critical Importance of Accurately Documenting Alliance Meetings,” Strategic Alliance Magazine, Q3 2013) — Knowledge of the pathways to deal with legal disputes (e.g., government court systems, mediations, arbitration) — Knowledge of the common types of legal uncertainties associated with the alliance business model With these competencies as a base, an alliance manager can move on to tackle one of the most challenging responsibilities in the field: transitioning from an alliance nurturer—with a focus on supporting the alliance’s health—to an alliance advocate. As an advocate, an alliance professional takes a strong position on a topic and leverages her relationships, understanding of company cultures, and mastery of corporate and alliance processes to drive to an outcome that she has championed. Striking the appropriate balance between these two 36
roles—nurturer and advocate—is at the core of great alliance management, and thus requires a significant level of vision, judgment, and influence on the part of the alliance manager. An inability to maintain this balance is often at the root of failure. What characteristics are required to make this transition? In our experience, success hinges on one’s ability to demonstrate vision, judgment, and influence within the alliance and among alliance colleagues. Most people intuitively understand the importance of these traits but may have difficulty defining them as actionable and measurable. We use the following descriptions:
Vision — Being able to clearly see the full potential of an alliance from the outset — Leveraging personal experiences or know-how to anticipate alliance issues before they occur— this can be achieved by learning from other alliance managers or by documenting significant issues for future reference — Cultivating and leveraging professional networks and reaching out to others for consultation and coaching when needed—alliance managers should understand the pressures that leaders at their own and partner companies are facing; these might come from inside or outside the company and may be specific to a single leader or common to an entire unit
Judgment — Identifying when an alliance issue warrants watchful waiting or intervention—be aware of critical upcoming decision points in the alliance or at either company, because sometimes small decisions lay the foundation for larger decisions down the road; also, be aware of interpersonal or cultural issues that may require proactive management — Planning and executing the most appropriate interventions—many factors should be considered, such as the individuals involved, the financial or other business impact to the companies, or timing of other significant business decisions; it may be helpful to collaborate with other alliance managers or leaders to evaluate several options with associated benefits and risks prior to implementation or intervention — Applying knowledge and experience to navigate corStrategic Alliance Magazine
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porate politics within both companies—get to know the leaders and other stakeholders; understand their professional and personal priorities and any defining experiences they will draw upon to make decisions; network with others for a broader perspective on stakeholders
Influence — Convincing others to embrace the vision of the alliance—identify the decision makers early and get updates on current priorities; whenever possible, bring data into the discussion, share which options have been weighed, and be prepared with a recommendation; gain support as needed from others, such as legal, finance, and operations — Leveraging trust, loyalty, and commitment to effect change with internal clients and partner company clients—consistently demonstrate diligence in managing decisions and issues; when delivering difficult messages, do so sensitively and explain all the factors that were considered Like the copper that is added to pure silver to make it stronger, these characteristics of vision, judgment, and influence serve to make an alliance manager much more useful— and much more valuable—in the context of the partnership.
Coach with Competencies To assess strengths, weaknesses, and experience gaps, alliance managers at all levels can work with their supervisors or coaches to develop an action plan for improvement. When evaluating an alliance manager’s competency level, you should always take into account current assignments. If an alliance manager has worked on several long-standing alliances, for example, and is assigned a new partnership to manage, teaching that person skills to support alliance startup should be an area of focus. It’s important to remember that not every competency applies to every member of the alliance management team. Some skills are component or function specific; others may not fit the exact role of the individual. Discussions between the alliance manager and the supervisor can better define the competencies most relevant to current roles and responsibilities. With the competencies needed to succeed in mind, an alliance manager should: — Assess knowledge and capability levels — Meet with his or her supervisor to review assessments Quarter 1, 2014
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— Agree on the current skill level and target level to be reached — Prioritize competencies to be mastered — Identify the top three areas and commit those to writing — Implement the development plan
Leverage the Model The alliance manager is at the heart of any business alliance. Like a base metal, the alliance manager brings to the job a set of skills, perhaps from a previous role in project management, human resources, finance, legal, engineering, IT, business development, or another industry-specific function. Any of these disciplines provides an excellent base; however, an effective alliance manager grows from that base of knowledge and experience by mastering specific operational and functional competencies. As the alliance manager alloys her skill set with additional competencies—and is able to consistently demonstrate vision, judgment, and influence—a stronger and more stable alliance manager emerges, helping the partnership achieve superior business results. Rachelle E. Hawkins, CA-AM, is director of alliance management at Eli Lilly and Company. With Joanna May, she shares responsibility for effective alliance transitions as well as alliance management for development, commercial, and manufacturing alliances. Hawkins has a background in health care prior to the pharmaceutical industry. Rachelle can be reached at Hawkins_rachelle_e@lilly. com or +1-317-277-4518. Joanna L. C. May, CA-AM, is director of alliance management at Eli Lilly and Company. With Rachelle Hawkins, she leads teams that maximize the value of partnered assets at each stage of the development cycle and mitigate alliance risk. May has a background in research prior to joining the pharmaceutical industry. Joanna can be reached at may_joanna@lilly.com or +1-317-277-2030. Steven E. Twait, CSAP, is senior director of alliance management and M&A integration at Eli Lilly and Company. He can be reached at stwait@lilly.com, +1-317-276-5494. David S. Thompson, CA-AM, is chief alliance officer at Eli Lilly and Company and is a member of the ASAP board of directors. He can be reached at Thompson_David_S@Lilly.com, +1- 317-277-8003.
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Collaborative Buzz Collaborative Buzz Cont. from page 14 for other companies to help us continue supporting Allstate customers with these retirement products,” said Don Civgin, president and chief executive officer of Allstate Financial. “ING U.S. is our first strategic alliance since the announcement. We chose ING U.S. because of its financial and brand strength, leadership in the annuity industry, and fixed annuity solutions that complement our life, retirement, savings, long-term care, and disability products that are Allstate-branded or issued by other leading insurers. We look forward to bringing ING U.S. fixed annuities to Allstate customers.” Allstate said that it planned to start offering several ING USA fixed annuities by the beginning of this year.
GSK Launches Global Cancer Consortium
ASAP Corporate Member GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced in December the formation of the Oncology Clinical and Translational Consortium (OCTC), a collaborative scientific research network comprising six internationally renowned comprehensive cancer centers. The centers include Gustave Roussy (Villejuif, France); University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston, Tex.); Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York); Netherlands Cancer Institute (Amsterdam); Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network (Toronto); and Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology—VHIO (Barcelona). For GSK, creation of the consortium underscores the company’s commitment to developing innovative patient therapies through rational combination and collaboration with external partners to access, cultivate, and stimulate scientific innovation. In forming the consortium, GSK will gain OCTC’s expertise in preclinical, translational, and clinical development of novel anticancer therapeutics, including kinase inhibitors, epigenome modulating compounds, and immunotherapies, which are key areas of focus of GSK’s cancer research drug discovery. The centers will have access to studies of GSK’s earlystage oncology pipeline and opportunities to advance the next generation of novel oncology therapeutics. OCTC, for its part, will foster scientific collaboration among the members and GSK. “Each OCTC member institution is recognized internationally as a leader in clinical and translational research,” said Rafael Amado, head of oncology R&D 38
at GlaxoSmithKline. “The consortium together with GSK will design and execute research programs in a focused and expeditious way, allowing us to potentially develop new diagnostic tools and medicines to better treat cancer patients.”
Dell and Microsoft Bolster Cloud Alliance ASAP Global Members Dell and Microsoft have announced that they are building on their strategic alliance to deliver Windows Azure to Dell customers worldwide through the Dell Cloud Partner Program. The move expands on the alliance, announced originally last July, to provide application development services on Windows Azure. Acting as a single-source supplier through the Dell Cloud Partner Program, Dell will offer customers a central point of solution integration, control, and direct support, which should lessen the complexity and challenges of deploying cloud environments, according to a company statement. “At the heart of Dell’s cloud strategy are customer choice and flexibility, the underlying reasons driving our continued expansion of the Dell Cloud Partner Program and our open, scalable cloud solutions and services across Dell,” said Nnamdi Orakwue, vice president of Dell Software Strategy, Operations, and Cloud. “Strengthening our relationship with Dell for Windows Azure adds new opportunities for businesses to quickly and easily build, deploy, and manage applications across public cloud environments,” said Garth Fort, general manager of Server and Tools Marketing, Microsoft. “This relationship will give additional tools to organizations of all sizes and help them turn the cloud into a focused, competitive advantage.”
The Hub That Spoke: J&J Innovation Initiative Takes Off Along with public-private partnerships, academic alliances, and other novel collaborations, the innovation hub has been making a splash in biopharma as a route to greater efficiency, as well as some of the benefits of crowdsourcing, in companies’ R&D efforts. To that end, Johnson & Johnson has been busy, developing at least eight new collaborations via innovation teams in London, Boston, and San Francisco, according to a company release and other sources. In addition, J&J is hammering out details of a new “biotech incubator” in Israel, as well as planning another R&D skunkworks in Shanghai. The Boston office is involved in a translational collaboration with MD Anderson in Texas on personalStrategic Alliance Magazine
ized cancer therapies, and has partnered with Intrexon to work on new hair-care products for the company’s consumer unit, according to a story in FierceBiotech. The California team is hard at work on vaccines, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and viral infections. And the London unit has been similarly employed
with separate deals covering different disease areas.
Control-Trust Dilemma Continued from page 27
FIGURE 2: Common mistakes in designing alliances
alliance, formal and informal building blocks, alignment with internal stakeholders, and a view on how to manage alliance dynamics. A detailed discussion of these five elements is beyond the scope of this article. The full version of Alliances: An Executive Guide to Designing Successful Strategic Partnerships contains detailed checklists and practical examples of all of these elements. The challenge for alliance managers is to combine these building blocks to create the right level of trust and control and thereby avoid common mistakes in designing alliances (see Figure 2). Ard-Pieter de Man, CSAP, is professor of management studies at VU University Amsterdam and dean of Sioo. He is a member of the ASAP global board of directors. He has more than 15 years’ experience as a consultant and researcher in the field of alliances, and has published more than a dozen books and 50 articles. His latest book, Alliances: An Executive Guide to Designing Successful Strategic Partnerships, was published by Wiley in 2014. (ASAP members receive a 20 percent discount when they order the book online at www.wiley.com Member Spotlight Continued from page 17 “Like most alliance leaders, we want to find ways to contribute to and be visible in the organization and really help drive revenue,” said Murphy. “A lot of the change that we are implementing is actually providing more opportunity for the team to be in position to be up in the ninth inning with the bases loaded.” While setting up meetings and getting the right people to the table are important elements of alliance execution, they are still only “table stakes” to Murphy. “That’s the entry level for what it takes to run a really good alliance. We all know there can be a perception gap: if that’s all people see you doing, that’s what they’re going to think you do. From a leadership perspective, Quarter 1, 2014
Other companies are taking a page from J&J’s book, with Merck planning its own innovation centers, GlaxoSmithKline adding offices in Boston and San Diego, and Pfizer and Sanofi increasing their presence in Boston as well. n
Lumping lust: adding goals to an alliance, leading to a loss of direction 51 percent fever: the belief that a majority gives control Set in stone: keeping to an agreement that is past its sell-by date Inbox indigestion: communicating through emails and letters, instead of at face-to-face meetings Lack of a joint design: leaving the work of designing the alliance to one of the partners, to a third party, or to deal-makers JV junkies: having a preference for joint ventures even if not the optimal form Expertise arrogance: believing that one knows better, even in the area of one’s partner’s expertise Equity addiction: using equity stakes to create commitment Internal incentives: forgetting to adapt internal incentives to fit the alliance Shaky steering committees: nominating people to the alliance steering committee or alliance board who do not have a stake in the alliance Committee confusion: creating a plethora of committees to deal with any conceivable problem A mess for less: selecting a lower-cost governance structure or a faster process, resulting in a structure that does not meet the alliance’s needs Myopic management: focusing on a governance structure that works well today but is not future-proof and use the promotional code VBE52. Attendees of the 2014 ASAP Global Alliance Summit are eligible for a 30 percent discount; they will receive a promotional code upon registration.) we want our team to be very visible, be very engaged, and be creating new alliance strategies that contribute to solid business results.”
Broadcasting the Alliance Team’s Success Through Social Media In order to raise the profile of the alliance practice throughout the organization, Unisys has become one of the growing number of ASAP Global and Corporate Members to rely heavily on social media channels such as Twitter and LinkedIn to drive higher awareness, as well as to solicit feedback. “My team is moving mountains for the organization, and I want to make sure all 22,500 employees know that,” said Murphy. n 39
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Your Career:
Influencing Without Authority Even Without the Power to Command, an Alliance Manager Can Elicit Positive Actions from Others for the Benefit of the Partnership By Jon Lavietes
IT’S COMMON KNOWLEDGE TO MOST in the alliance community: you do not have the formal power to demand a particular action from the stakeholders internally or at the partner organization. Yet, throughout the course of a collaboration, there are going to be many instances in which you will need people in sales, marketing, R&D, business development, legal, regulatory, and perhaps a host of other places to do their part by executing and prioritizing their responsibilities pertaining to the partnership. It’s something many in the profession lament, but Joe Kittel, consultant and coach at Spiritual Principles in Business Relationships (SPiBR.org), thinks alliance managers shouldn’t get worked up about it. “If you really focus on that—‘I need positional authority’—you end up getting frustrated and lose sight of the real opportunity,” he said. And that opportunity lies in the myriad ways to persuade people to take the best course of action on behalf of the alliance without having that traditional command and control. In the art and science that is alliance management, influencing without authority is arguably the “artiest” of the skills required to do the job. At any given time, an alliance manager might turn to a champion, a committee, or a good old-fashioned sales pitch to nudge people to serve the partnership’s interests.
Power of Persuasion Starts with a Vision Some of the principles of influencing without authority are obvious, even if easier said than done. A great starting point is to answer the age-old question “What’s in it for me?” Paul Lyons, partner executive and alliance manager at IBM, has had plenty Quarter 1, 2014
of experience persuading his colleagues in sales to utilize new partners to make their quotas. It is not uncommon for folks at the regional level to want to keep the status quo and either sell on their own or with another ally in Big Blue’s customer base. What do salespeople care most about? Commissions, commissions, commissions. “If you don’t have a strong business case that warrants him changing—if you can’t demonstrate some additional value that says, ‘You’re doing $10 million with your current partner, but you could be doing $20 million because of x, y, and z’—then why would he change?” said Lyons. Of course, coaxing the rest of the stakeholders, including other salespeople, will be tough if you do not have a mastery of the broader vision of your organization’s strategy and how the alliance fits into it. John Addeo, vice president of business development for the Solutions & Alliances Group at Dimension Data, works with channel partnership executives who are not as partnership-savvy as those who work with hand-in-hand strategic alliances. According to Addeo, the key to onboarding people is laying out a tri-directional vision that covers what Dimension 41
Data brings to the partnership, what the partner brings to his organization, and the value that both bring together to the marketplace. “That to us is the influencing piece. We can’t force any single partnership down our organization. We can only explain its value in context of our goals, and then ensure that we have Joe Kittel, consultant and coach a tight business value proposiat Spiritual Principles in Business Relationships (SPiBR.org). tion that goes in all three directions—us-to-them, them-to-us, and then collectively to the market,” he said. When sales, marketing, or product people get hung up, it often is on the last piece. Addeo said he usually conquers those hurdles by explaining things through the customer’s eyes. “Ultimately if we put our client at the center of what we are looking to achieve, I feel like we overcome most obstacles and work toward a successful partnership.” Where in IT advocating for the client helps align players in a partnership, it’s the focus on the patients that motivates people in pharmaceutical research and clinical development. Jeremy Ahouse, Ph.D., CSAP, director of strategic alliances at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, asserted that “the majority of people work in pharma and biotech because they want to be here. Many are doing work that brings together their avocation and vocation.” He further explained, “One of the appeals we can make broadly with our internal teams and partners is that we all want to develop therapies that benefit as many people as possible, as soon as possible. Asking ourselves why we are doing this motivates us and helps us work well together.”
Refining the Vision—over Lunch How you go about articulating this vision is as important as the vision itself. Kittel’s methodology entails obtaining feedback from all stakeholders to get their perspective on the vision of the alliance and how they would like the partner to work with them. He plays back the tape, so to speak, to the entire team in a group session where that vision gets further refined. “The magic is in the process—deep listening and demonstrating that each individual has been heard and understood—that achieves personal buy-in and support. Then by clearly articulating the voice of the collective, deeply aligned focus gets created,” he said. Getting mass adoption of a partnership in several countries around the world might also require a personal touch, as not everyone reads the collateral or attends the webinars provided to get stakeholders up to speed. In one of the partnerships under his watch, Addeo visited a resistant regional manager in India and found out that 42
the manager’s real issue was that he had already placed a bet on an existing partner in his market through extensive resourcing, sales enablement, and other commitments. He was concerned about the implications the new alliance would have on this relationship. Similarly, the UK-based Lyons was searching for answers as to why a French salesperson wasn’t utilizing a partnership in his region. “Is there nothing in it for him? Is it not aligned with his goals? Are his needs not being met? Am I not giving him something?” he wondered. Lyons eventually hopped on a train and treated the salesperson to a casual lunch, over which he was able to work through the executive’s concerns and get him on board. In both of these instances, heavy travel and one-on-one attention were required to navigate the obstacles.
“How Can I Help You?”: Understanding and Tough Love As the partnership moves through the execution phases of the alliance life cycle, influence is critical when you cannot mandate the priorities of others. This is especially true for Christopher DelGiudice, CA-AM, global leader of alliance management at medical device technology company Becton Dickinson, who has spent the past two years building an alliance practice for his organization’s diabetes division. In a field where alliances aren’t as embedded into corporate cultures as, say, the IT and biopharmaceutical industries, it can be challenging to ensure that internal stakeholders have prioritized alliance deliverables. “Often what I need to manage through is bandwidth of the various internal stakeholders. They often have other responsibilities and priorities. [It is essential to be] willing to help shepherd them through that process. At this stage of our journey of building a world-class alliance management capability, I’ve always got my sleeves rolled up,’” said DelGiudice. “What’s very important is being willing to pitch in. It’s not only ‘We need you to do this for all of these reasons,’ it’s ‘How can I help you?’ If I’m not the technical expert, perhaps there’s some way I can help you see how the alliance activities benefit you and our organization, and thus help in prioritizing your work.” An alliance manager may encounter someone not pulling his or her weight on a partnered project. According to Ahouse, it is wise to examine the nonperformer’s circumstances before going on the offensive. “Do their actions or inactions reflect their priorities? Is it not clear to them how they’re a part of this project? Do they understand their role? Is there another reason that makes this project not critical for them? Are they overworked and distracted? Examining how I or anyone on our teams could behave in a similar situation helps us avoid changing people without addressing the underlying problem. As alliance managers, we have a responsibility to look at the context before we conclude that there’s something wrong with the person. This is, after all, where we have the most leverage to make changes,” he said. Strategic Alliance Magazine
If it is determined that the whip is in order, the alliance manager should flex a little muscle—carefully—when necessary. Displaying this leadership characteristic is valued by senior executives. “Tough love is required at times. Be willing to use the big stick but realize it can negaJohn Addeo, vice president of business tively impact personal relationships. If a stick is required, I bedevelopment for the Solutions & Alliances Group at Dimension Data. lieve it is the alliance manager who should be wielding it. He or she should be comfortable being both ‘good cop’ and ‘bad cop’ as situations dictate,” said Kittel, adding that one should do it with “love, gentleness, and compassion where you can.” Kittel was also careful to point out that you never want to do anything that would compromise trust. “The phrase I’ve heard is: tough on the issues, soft on people.”
I Want You to Want Me (Not Need Me) Moving further into the nitty-gritty and dealing with individual scenarios that arise, Kittel strives to achieve what he calls “selfobsolescence” when he helps stakeholders through a conflict or issue. He tries to understand the relevant party’s challenges and share his knowledge so that the stakeholders eventually get to a point where they are self-reliant vis-à-vis their alliance activities. “I was freely giving away my wisdom and insights, so they didn’t need me. This seems counterintuitive, but as I try to make it so that others in the alliance don’t need me, they end up wanting me. As I give freely my best ideas to others, they naturally give back—and thus my knowledge, influence, and informal power increases as I strive to give it away,” he said. “I’m not trying to prove myself or force myself on people. I’m trying to make it so they’re sufficient on their own.” Mike Berglund, CA-AM, director of alliance management at Eli Lilly and Company, cited two broad components necessary to successfully influence an outcome: 1) self-awareness and 2) situational awareness. In describing the former, Berglund ran through a series of questions to consider in understanding how you can affect a situation given your abilities, personality, intuition, and social capital. “What do I have to achieve, and how am I going to go about doing it? Where are my personal strengths and weaknesses? Where are my relationships? Who do I know? What’s my Rolodex like if I have to pull levers or seek information?” he said.
We Have a Situation Situational awareness has a lot to do with who will be involved in a particular instance and how to involve them. Quarter 1, 2014
“Who are the stakeholders? Where and at what level do they sit? How involved have they been in this issue/topic previously? How involved have they been in the alliance? Do you need legal counsel there? Once you have your ultimate playing field, then you begin to work within it,” he said. Berglund underscored the importance of knowing where each employee resides on the chain and understanding when it is appropriate to contact executives at each level. In general, process questions should get directed to midlevel managers, while highlevel business strategy or enterprise matters will likely be handled by more senior executives with vice president titles or higher. “You always try to push it to the lowest level, but you also want to make sure that those individuals have the authority to make that decision. Because the last thing we want is for someone to say ‘We agree with this proposal,’ then [have] that individual’s boss’s boss say ‘There is absolutely no way in the world I am going to support this,’” said Berglund. He added that alliance managers shouldn’t be shy about escalating within an organization, especially when time is of the essence for a critical decision—“sometimes that’s a call you have to make,” he said. However, do so only after careful consideration. It’s a trait of leading boldly. “The minute you start escalating, you need to be pretty clear [about] what the implications are of that because people typically don’t like having their recommendations or decisions challenged,” said Berglund. “You need to be pretty certain that’s where you want to go—if you’re trying to influence the organization or trying to get stuff done in the organization where you have no authority, the how becomes oftentimes more important than the what.”
Get a Room If there is a disagreement or a misalignment between senior executives from each partner organization, the alliance manager does not necessarily have to be the one resolving the conflict. Berglund said an alliance manager should use his or her judgment to determine whether those leaders should settle their issues directly. “What can you resolve personally given whatever indirect authority you have versus when is it your job to just put the two parties in a room, one person who has asked for the deliverable and the other person who says no? When is it just appropriate for you to facilitate a discussion between the two of them? Conflict is not necessarily bad. It’s one of the reasons we move forward,” he said. “The best way for an alliance manager to resolve those disconnects is simply to put the right people in the room to have a discussion.”
Governance = Cover Some of those most senior executives can be found on one of the few formal tools at the alliance manager’s disposal: the alliance governing committee. 43
“The governance structure is important because it gives a mechanism for conversation that we can have that is effectively above the fray,” said Addeo.
based in Belgium. The colleague told Lyons of a distinguished engineer working in the UK, where Lyons is also based, who is highly respected in his field, within and outside of IBM.
“You can say that you are acting on behalf of the office of the senior governing committee, which does provide some weight. If the executive cochairs want it to be done, and you are the means to ensure that that is completed, you in many cases by default have some authority to ask for some work to get done or to be delivered,” said Berglund.
“It turns out one of the key guys is on my own doorstep, but I didn’t know,” he said.
“Your influence derives from the privilege of being the in-house representative for the partner.” Again, since Joint Steering Committees (JSCs) usually include some of the most senior managers in each partner organization, their time and attention should be used judiciously. “This means that the issues you bring to the JSC to focus on are the ones that you really want their input and direction on. To the extent that you do that well, you become a trustworthy facilitator in the ongoing conversation between the team and the leadership,” said Ahouse. “If they recognize that you’re not wasting their time, you’re not asking them to weigh in on things that can be easily delegated.” “If you’re an alliance manager and your organization’s leadership knows you are not going to come bug them for every problem, there’s going to be more time—if you have demonstrated value in the past, specifically by managing risk,” said Berglund. A person who knows when a situation requires escalation to senior management and uses the governance process correctly will have more credibility in the eyes of company leadership, and will likely be in better position to influence conversations about critical partnership issues.
Stakeholder Map Guides the Way Since you can only go to the governance well so many times, it helps to align yourself with champions and other influencers at each partner organization. To do this, Lyons relies heavily on a “stakeholder map,” which he said is “a way of graphically mapping out the landscape of your influential stakeholders and understanding the characteristics of the roles they are performing and the way in which they behave.” Lyons went out of his way to make the point that a stakeholder map is not an org chart. “Organizational stuff is helpful, but what I’m talking about is not necessarily hierarchical.” Rather, he used another analogy to explain the concept. “It’s like having a cast of actors onstage; you need to know the role of each one of those actors, what it is you’re expecting them to do. Are they the right actor for the part?” To illustrate the concept, Lyons spoke about a conversation he was having with an executive from IBM’s mobile solutions group 44
The larger point, of course, is that people who command respect, produce converts, and elicit buy-in from key people to the alliance’s mission can be found anywhere. On the flip side, so can detractors. DelGiudice, too, spoke of the importance of getting out into your own and the partner’s organization to “understand how decisions are made, who’s going to be a challenge, and who’s going to be somebody that will be a supporter or a champion.…You’ve got to get out there and talk to people in your own company to understand who’s who and who’s doing what.”
A Unique Resource: The Alliance Ombudsman It is widely agreed that the alliance manager’s role as steward of the asset or collaboration inherently gives that person great credibility. “[If] a good alliance manager can be able to powerfully articulate from either company’s perspective, I think your ability to influence increases,” said Kittel. “If you’re principled enough that you can stand up for the other company and argue their side, you know it’s right, and it may present challenges to your own company, [but] you gain amazing credibility and authority.” Berglund pointed out that the alliance manager is sometimes one of the few individuals with visibility into alliance-related activities across regions or functions, as well as inside-out knowledge of the contract and rules of engagement. Because of this, the team often realizes they need an alliance manager’s assistance just as alliance managers need support from their team. “People directly involved in alliances, doing the work…they’ve got the day job to deliver business objectives for the asset—[tunnel vision] is expected and understandable [from them]. It’s our job to be watching the gray space above that,” said Berglund. Ahouse added that some areas in drug development, such as regulatory and manufacturing, are purposely designed to encourage people to conduct their activities with a narrow focus. “We don’t always drive to consensus. Sometimes the expert in the room is there precisely to give a clear and singular voice to an issue. “People look to alliance management because they have experience working across companies.… Your influence derives from the privilege of being the in-house representative for the partner; you can play that role because you take the time to know their interests well,” he said. Another thing alliance professionals know well: cajoling people to act on behalf of the alliance may not be easy, but it sure is rewarding when you succeed. n Strategic Alliance Magazine
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champion Alliances Under the Hood Keith Gamble Uses a Mix of Technical Savvy and People Skills to Bring Big IT Players Together and Drive EMC’s Technology Alliances to the Finish Line By Michael Burke
KEITH GAMBLE HAS HIS CSAP CERTIFICATION, is active in ASAP’s New England chapter, and has been a senior alliances manager at EMC for the past decade, working with big IT partners like Cisco. But when he first embarked on this phase of his career, he admitted, “I didn’t even understand anything about alliances; I was thinking it was like project management. As it’s evolved, it’s more like marriage counseling.” The “couples” Gamble has counseled over the years have been alliance stakeholders at his own company, along with a host of major partners, including BearingPoint, Capgemini, Deloitte, SAP, and especially Cisco, with whom EMC has what Gamble terms “a special relationship.” And like a couples counselor, Gamble stays busy tying people together: in this case, not just by getting alliance partners to sit down at the same table, but by bringing a little bit of Silicon Valley to New England (EMC is headquartered in Hopkinton, Mass.) and by giving alliance managers in high tech a place to go for ideas and support—namely, the ASAP New England chapter. “For me, Silicon Valley is the center of the universe for IT,” he explained. “However, having a tech presence on the East Coast helps, whether it’s an IT user group or ASAP New England; this helps bring people of various backgrounds together on a common theme. It’s easier on the East Coast in the pharma space. But in the IT sector, having the opportunity to get together for ASAP events is great; [ASAP New England is] bringing in people from [different] functions in the IT world. It’s not the Silicon Valley of the East, but there’s a community here. It’s overflowing in Silicon Valley—you don’t get that here naturally or organically. “It’s a very unique role in the organization, the alliances role. You Quarter 1, 2014
speak your own language, understand the same pain points and challenges. I don’t know if [the chapter is] a ‘support group’ or not, but you’re not in marketing or sales, a function that people historically know. You say you’re an alliance manager—but unless you’re in the space, people say, ‘What does that mean?’”
From Engineering Buildings to Engineering Alliances Gamble has been in the space for quite a while now, but it’s not where his career got its start. Born and raised in Ireland, Gamble graduated with honors from Trinity College, Dublin, with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. Working as an engineer thereafter, he met his American wife on a building project in Belgium. When she returned to the States, Gamble followed, and enrolled in graduate school as a way to stay here legally. He earned a master’s in environmental engineering from USC, originally intending to go on and get his doctorate, but decided that would be “a long haul.” So changing course, he decided to get his MBA instead and moved east, eventually earning the degree from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Gamble said, and Boston seemed like the place where most of the jobs were. By 2001, the 45
year he earned his MBA, Gamble was working as a consultant for Deloitte. “My theory was, if I found an industry or vertical that was strong in Boston I wouldn’t be traveling as much as I was,” he recalled. “I decided to focus in on biotech and pharma, to stay more local— then ended up being on projects in Philadelphia and California! After three years of that, it was too much.” On one consulting project for Deloitte, Gamble ended up working at EMC for several weeks. “They liked what I did, and the team I was working with knew of a position they were looking to fill in the alliances organization at EMC, focusing on systems integrators. I interviewed for that, got the role, and joined EMC 10 years ago. I’ve been doing alliance management from the get-go.” Gamble acknowledged that his experience as an engineer is “not the typical background” for an alliance manager; but on the other hand, his former role engineering buildings has morphed into his current role engineering alliances. And it doesn’t hurt that he has a technical background, either. “The group I’m in is technology alliances,” Gamble explained. “It’s involved in the technical relationship between EMC and a partner, versus a sales relationship, say. I’m not responsible for selling; I’m responsible for the technical interlock: does our stuff work
with your stuff ? You have the partner’s infrastructure or platform: is EMC keeping up with that, and are we collaborating to build a joint solution together? Storage”—EMC’s forte, along with virtualization, analytics, and cloud computing—“is part of a stack that the customer would buy; they’d need an app working on a server, running on a chip, involving partners like Intel, Cisco, VMware, and EMC, all of that running an SAP, Microsoft, or Oracle workload. They all have to play together for that to work.”
Getting Under the Hood The job of the high-tech alliance manager, as Gamble sees it, is a combination of technical know-how and people skills—but perhaps with an emphasis on the latter. “My role within technology alliances is really under the hood,” he said. “In the IT space, there’s always somebody who’s smarter on the tech end, guys who can do a deep dive and never come up. You have to be technical enough to have a veneer of technology, talk the talk, but then be cognizant if the plan is taking a left turn, getting the level of conversation you need to have different people [involved]. Depending on which partner you’re working on, you have to get up to speed on the latest and greatest [technology]. But it is ultimately a people role; you’re networking, breaking bread, getting to know people—that’s how you do it. There’s always a fire to put out, a mad panic. But you can’t be a pushover.
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You have to have a bit of a backbone as well, be confident in your positioning. Support your management, have confidence they’ll trust you in your recommendations, and have a good brand within your organization.”
by changing market forces, rapidly evolving technology, and the presence in the sandbox of both big players and a profusion of start-ups. All of this begets a shifting scene of both intense competition and an imperative for collaboration.
Gamble began his alliance management work at EMC working first with systems integrators such as BearingPoint, Capgemini, and Deloitte, then worked on alliances with SAP, and more recently on EMC’s critical and multifaceted collaboration with Cisco.
“Sometimes you’re partnering with somebody, and in the same organization, another team is building a product that’s competitive,” Gamble noted. “It’s a very interesting dynamic, and one of the things I like about the space. Every month some company is acquiring a start-up. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is the hot topic today, along with Big Data. In the world that I live in, the data centers, EMC and Cisco compete. EMC owns VMware, an independent company. Cisco launched a product, Insieme, with a data center architecture called ACI, which is one view of the future; another is VMware’s product NSX. So you have this overlay of EMC as the majority owner of VMware. VMware says the future is this; Cisco says the future is that. Now we have these two dynamics going on in the SDN marketplace, with both parties trying to convince the customer their vision of the future is the way to go. It makes for some interesting bedfellows.”
“Cisco has a special relationship with EMC because we have a joint venture with them, called VCE: VMware, Cisco, and EMC, as well as Intel,” Gamble explained. “I work on an alliance team that supports partnering with Cisco on our joint data center business—leveraging their network product set and our storage, security, and virtualization products. It’s a nice relationship to have: we need them, they need us. You try to pick some preferred partners to go to market with. “There’s three legs to the relationship: an OEM relationship, the VCE joint venture, and then everything else—‘everything else’ is what I work on. Primarily all the go-to-market activity, all that has to happen for go-to-market programs to [succeed]. I’m working on preparing to bring new solutions to market as well as the historic or traditional alliance management functions that occur in an organization. Everything from legal agreements to marketing, show planning, and equipment forecasting for proof of concepts that showcase the EMC portfolio and are relevant to joint customers. Cisco is a very strategic partner to EMC. It’s challenging to have that responsibility and accountability—we have a lot of eyes on us.”
IT Bedfellows: Is It Good for You Too? Whereas Gamble works in one alliances group at EMC, focused on technology alliances, there is another group as well, termed “global alliances.” This group deals with systems integrators, outsourcers, service providers, and OEMs, according to Gamble. “These are guys who are sales driven, quota driven, working with implementers and hosting partners around the world. They’re like sales guys who work on alliances. “I do the same thing, but my customer is the partner. I’m responsible for helping to build and enable solutions through our go-tomarket team. Cisco and EMC are big players in the marketplace; when it’s big guy to small guy it’s different. With Cisco we’re more peers. We are quasi-neutral from the server perspective, so they like us”—in other words, EMC and Cisco have the same main competitors on servers, namely IBM and HP. “With two big companies, both parties think they have the upper hand. You need to find collaboration, sometimes bend instead of break, and sometimes do things you don’t want to do but that are good for the long-term relationship.” Just as the IT alliance manager’s role is a blend of technical savvy and relationship management, the IT space today is beset Quarter 1, 2014
Be Here Now The way to survive and prosper in this often confusing environment, Gamble said, is to focus on the job at hand, the short-term exigencies of the marketplace, and—always—the customer. “You have to stay focused on the short term; the customer’s needs are always there. The near term is two to six months in this business. The other thing is trying to really understand that there’s a lot of noise, bloggers, and other activity, with people saying ‘This is the end of VCE’ or ‘There’s a big problem for these companies long-term’—the fact of the matter is there’s a lot of business to be had in the collaboration space. The business we have together and are driving together, maybe it’ll be smaller or bigger in 10 years, but there’s a lot of work in the short term. So let’s not worry about the big picture—people at executive levels can worry about the five-year strategy. People are fretting over what it will all mean in five years. You can get a terabyte [of storage] on a thumb drive today: does that mean the end of EMC? Probably not. Things will evolve. It’s challenging, but you have to tune out the noise, focusing on the deliverables you have every quarter.” Gamble painted a contrast between the world of IT and that of pharmaceuticals, the two largest industry groups in ASAP’s membership. “In pharma, you have a 20-year horizon,” he noted. “There’s clinical trials, and months and years of work before you even make a product. Then it’s a multibillion-dollar decision, go or no go. Here, it’s a much shorter cycle, and product decisions are not in the billions. Disruptive technology is a game changer in the space we’re in. Companies that didn’t exist a year ago are being gobbled up by big guys. It’s a different rhythm. There’s a lot more disruption and 47
you sort of have to figure—it’s a cliché, but ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ Very few companies can do it all: even HP or IBM, they don’t have everything. Even if they could or did, people don’t want to get locked into one thing, where there’s no leverage on price. Customer choice is always going to be a driving function in buying behavior. Everybody’s trying to leapfrog everybody else.”
Certified Value Gamble sees value in ASAP, not only for the supportive, networking aspects of the regional chapters and larger-scale events, but also in terms of professional development and, particularly, certification. “I think regarding the CA-AM, anyone who has ‘alliance’ in their title should take that exam and pass it,” he said. “Going from CAAM to CSAP is for people who view the role as special, who want to get more out of it than just a job, to invest in their organization; they believe in what they’re doing and want to make a difference. Now it’s becoming a valid certification for recruiters. As that gets more prevalent, it helps raise awareness of being CSAP certified. It requires a lot of work, not only to get it, but to maintain it. You need to be involved in your organization, chapter, and company, moving the profession forward. That’s where I think the value is. It’s only when you put in the work that you get rewarded.” Gamble is one of a couple of CSAPs at EMC, and he hopes this
number increases as word spreads about the benefits of certification and ASAP membership. Along with certification, Gamble sees ASAP as an essential means of facilitating professional connections and sharing alliance knowledge. “For me it’s very simple. I’m a networker, and it’s a fantastic networking opportunity. I’ve made connections from a business perspective—like Frank Curran [ASAP New England’s chapter president]—the only time I’ve met him is through ASAP. And there’s people in similar roles. With the New England chapter, there are corporate members here you get to pull in, like Microsoft, Intel, and others, and because we’re in New England they have a common home. The [ASAP Global Alliance Summit] is another great way to meet people. It helps me expand my horizons, with companies doing alliance management in my vein of IT.” “There’s some self-service in this,” he continued. “ASAP certification improves your brand. Maybe somebody will tap you on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, we need someone with your skills.’ It’s a benefit, because there’s a level set of commonality. You have similar pain points and experiences to share or build upon. Everyone’s situation is different, but there’s a lot of things people have seen before. Things that seem like common sense still need to be pointed out. Things happen, [and you can ask other members], ‘What have you done?’ You see best practices, and it’s very valuable.” n
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Collaboration for Smarties As Collaboration Sweeps Through the World of Business, What Does the Future Hold for the Profession of Alliance Management? By John W. DeWitt
LAST FALL, I GOT AN EMAIL promoting the IBM limited edition of Collaboration for Dummies. A couple of thoughts went through my mind. First was that collaboration has “arrived” if we have a Dummies book about it. Second, perhaps we should have called The ASAP Handbook of Alliance Management: A Practitioner’s Guide “Collaboration for Smarties”—because I can’t recall meeting a single unintelligent person in the alliance management community. It’s not a profession for the faint of thought. So if collaboration has arrived, what does that mean for alliance management? After years of building a discipline around strategic alliances, the most complex and difficult form of collaboration, is our profession now going to enjoy its day in the sun? What does the collaborative future portend? To answer that question, we of course asked the “smarties.” Since December, our executive publisher and ASAP’s CEO, Mike Leonetti, CSAP, and I have been interviewing some of the leading practitioners, pioneers, researchers, and consultants in the profession, asking them key questions about the current and anticipated state of alliance management. Their thoughts—and the results of a survey we will conduct this spring—will appear in our forthcoming article in the Q2 (May) 2014 issue of this magazine. Following is a sneak peek. Our interviewees consistently echoed the sentiment that alliance management capabilities are more relevant than ever to their organizations in 2014—regardless of their industry. As one consultant we talked to put it, “organizational leadership is paying attention to alliance success—and to the clear evidence showing companies that invest in alliance management outperform their peers that don’t.” A senior alliance executive for a top pharmaceutical company put it this way: “Alliance management is recognized as needed, necessary, here to stay.” However, the exec noted, that’s been the case for a while. What’s different now? “The nature of collaboration is changing between big pharma and smaller pharma companies, and the nature of collaboration between 50
big pharma players is changing as well. There’s a recognition within our top leadership of these changes, and recognition that new skills are needed if you’re no longer doing everything internally. We’re being listened to more often.” What about the broader trend of business collaboration and its intersection with alliance management—is it good news for us that three-quarters of CEOs view collaborative ability as their number one talent priority? “The arrows are pointing in our direction,” one interviewee said. However, the dots are not fully connected in the C-suite between alliance management and collaboration. “I think from an ASAP and alliance management perspective, we are not yet recognized as being experts in collaboration.” ASAP’s recent efforts to raise its profile in the human resources community are one important step forward, one interviewee emphasized. “The C-suite has tasked HR with finding the next strategic collaborative leaders—and alliance management is a huge resource pool. They need to recognize that there is this pool of talent in alliance management— executives who can lead virtual teams, who know how to gain strategic alignment, build consensus, a whole raft of skills that fall into leading via influence and collaboration versus the old style of command and control.” But the opportunity to be seen as collaboration leaders still must be seized, not taken for granted just because we bring so many of the requisite skills and capabilities for collaboration. “We need to claim the collaboration space,” argued an executive who’s been a high-tech alliance professional since the 1980s. “We can show we have the track record for developing corporate value through collaboration. And that language will get us into Forbes and Fortune and Bloomberg much better than alliance management. So let’s start building some visibility around that skillset that CEOs are demanding.” That sounded pretty smart to Mike Leonetti and me. Stay tuned for more in the Q2 2014 Strategic Alliance Magazine. n Strategic Alliance Magazine
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