Whitepaper Excerpt

Uncertainty Exists

Our consulting experiences and research[1] demonstrate that while there is general agreement that collaboration is essential, there is considerable uncertainty about how to embrace a collaborative way of working and conducting business.  For example, a colleague related a conversation he had in the executive suite of one of the most respected global companies. The executive he was speaking with oversees the company’s supply chain. Our colleague was somewhat surprised to hear the executive say that he knew he needed to collaborate across his supply chain; he just didn’t know how to go about it. He’s clearly not alone.

During a plenary session presentation at The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals’ (A.S.A.P.) Annual Global Summit (February 2006), we asked those in attendance whether the people in their organizations know how to collaborate. Much to our surprise, out of approximately 175 people, only six people raised their hand.

The results of our straw poll are reinforced by the results of an alliance management survey conducted by Vantage Partners (2006). The survey findings show that the vast majority of respondents believe that the 10 alliance relationship management capabilities identified by Vantage are important, but only a minority indicated that their companies have those capabilities on more than an ad hoc basis.

Recently, we conducted a study with more than 100 sales representatives of a major global company involved in a “sell with” alliance with another global company. The instrument used to conduct the assessment provides participants with scenarios they are likely to encounter that involve their alliance counterparts. Because of the nature of the survey, the results are not statistically significant. They do however, provide some insights. Figure 1 shows that while sales professionals understood what would be the desirable outcomes to the scenarios, they didn’t know how to go about collaborating with their counterparts to achieve them. Their direct managers scored similarly, which points to the danger in assuming that managers have the necessary skills to support effective collaboration.