Over-performers are More Aligned to Corporate Strategy and to Operations
Collaboration and in particular collaborative innovation has been widely recognized as a critical corporate competency in the current business conversation. In our best practices research we found that over-performing alliances were more consistently aligned to corporate strategy and more collaborative in involving senior leadership, stakeholders, and partners in designing the strategic intent of the partnership. In some cases, the alignment is subtle, but it is unwaveringly consistent; on average over-performers are 8% more aligned.
In informal surveys in our Alliance Skills Mastery workshops, alliance managers tell us they spend up to 70% of their time managing internal alignment, indicating how important this role is for successful alliances.
Yet few alliance executives take a major role in the company strategy conversation where alliance experience can be invaluable in the build, buy or partner decision
Operational Alignment is Key to Execution and Results
Operational alignment is crucial to execution and crucial for alliances that are formed ultimately to add to the growth of the business. Operational alignment looks at how well integrated partners are at the functional and process level.
Despite indications that the under-performers were more focused on revenue, they were not more operationally focused on the processes that drive revenue. Over-performing alliances are an average of 14% more aligned in the joint operations related to generating revenue than the overall population. Although with an average of 3.4 on a scale of 5, there is still room for improvement even for the over-performers.
