Strategic Alliances: Three Ways to Make Them Work

Building the Right Relationships

You can have the best process and people in the world, but an alliance can still go painfully wrong. So frequently in business, it comes down to the relationships between partners. Building and maintaining these connections requires soft skills that are hard to teach and difficult to quantify, but invaluable.

Relationships are the art of the alliance. They are also the glue that holds an alliance together, particularly when conflicts break out. You must make building strong relationships an essential part of every alliance or risk watching it implode at the first sign of discord. Contrary to popular belief at many companies, legal agreements can’t run the day-to-day business of an alliance or legislate human behavior. ...