Three Activities for Small Business Alliance Success

While I realize you might think these ideas too simplistic, understand that a number of people spend their entire careers working on the fine details of alliance development and implementation

Finding others with whom you can create mutually beneficial value.
Too many business owners never get past this first activity. In searching for another business with which to develop a strategic alliance there must be complementary core competencies. This means that their circles of interest must overlap, as should their core capabilities. Inherent in the search for a compatible partner is the fear of having to give up a modicum of control. Giving up control is a huge hurdle for many small business owners.

Delivering that value to one another.
This would seem straightforward but the challenge is in understanding what your partner considers valuable. Too frequently, one partner delivers value to another that the second partner did not consider to be of value. Guess what? The perception from the second partner's point of view is that no value has been delivered in this situation.

Communicating to your partner the value you delivered.
Through my work in the area of alliance development and implementation, I have discovered that about fifty percent of the alliances created are not successful. The primary reason for the lack of success in most cases was ineffective communication. There are a number of possibilities from basic to complex. Many of the successful communication methods are electronic centric.

Ya gotta measure the results; many of the follow up and feedback methods use the 360-team evaluation style of response mechanism. This allows perceptions of alliance performance in both the macro and micro to be known by all. Once challenges are discovered, repair strategies and tactics can be put into place.