Why are alliance managers failing?

There is a crying need for more professionalism and leadership in the world of strategic alliances. We base this statement on research over 25 years talking to over 1000 directors and senior managers in over 200 major, global partnerships. We expect our managers at every level to be leaders and in the collaboration context the two functions are inseparable.

 Top management find alliances intellectually appealing and potentially commercially rewarding but don’t want to be burdened with the detail of what needs doing. Instead, they prefer to regard the Joint Board meetings as opportunities to interrogate and ‘educate’ the ‘relationship managers’. They expect and demand good news. For example, a corporate Head of Europe believed that her ‘digital hospital’ was a great success. In fact, it had been in place for four years and had never worked properly. She had clearly been a victim of her own propaganda.

Middle management have a very poor understanding of the roles and responsibilities within their own company, let alone the partner team. There is also a gap in understanding the overall aims and objectives of the alliance and the performance targets.

 “The lack of a clear work specification system and change control audit trail results in disputes over contract amendment, specification and purchasing and poor work planning and delays. The whole thing is a bag of nails.” (Head of Commercial, International Energy Facilities Supplier)

 Operations staff are often unled and frustrated. They may have been aware of the announcement of an alliance but often that was as far as it went. They continued to work as normal but started to encounter new problems and priorities which upset their routines and resulted in inefficiencies. They had to put in more time and effort in an attempt to keep up but, without clear direction they had difficulty integrating the new requirements into their schedule. Their opposite numbers in the partner organization were in the same boat and sympathy cliques formed, for instance between engineers. These relationships were often quite strong and actions were agreed without reference upwards e.g. design, commercial, etc. and thus resulted in any number of negative outcomes.

 Relationship managers if they exist are frequently at the wrong level, often in self-protection mode because the tasks required of them were often beyond their pay grade and they were blamed for failures. Even the best relationship manager will be ineffective if he does not receive responsible and proactive support from the various management functions within his own company. Until these become part of the solution, they will remain part of the problem!

These are just a few of the many attitudes and behaviours that undermine the management and leadership of collaborative relationships. We can only deduce that they are the result of a lack of through-career training and development. Why is this happening so often today?