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About Vital Signs
The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP) has partnered with The Rhythm of Business to provide a simple and impactful assessment of the effectiveness of alliance operations. VitalSigns provides both qualitative and quantitative data for evaluating an alliance as if it were an entity. It does not evaluate each partner or point fingers. It takes personalities out the picture and focuses on business.
The assessment:
- Produces a set of metrics that can be tracked and compared over time and across alliances
- Pinpoints what is working effectively and how to leverage that success
- Focuses on how organizational structure, work practices, resource allocation decisions, and conflicting incentives may be hindering outcomes
- Highlights specific opportunities for collaborative skill development amongst alliance team members
VitalSigns is based on The Rhythm of Business' framework for high performing alliances. The framework has been developed and tested in alliances and other collaborative networks in multiple industries. This concise, logical framework includes the key dimensions of alliance effectiveness.
Effective Collaboration
- Coordinating activities - for timely planning and execution
- Communicating information - to appropriately inform and ensure timeliness in decision making
- Leveraging resources - of financial, talent, knowledge, and relationship natures to maximize success
Conducive Environment
- Governance - providing an effective forum for the conduct of alliance business
- Accountability - encouraging acceptance of responsibility for individual action or inaction
- Trust and transparency - making interests known and demonstrating trustworthiness
Outstanding Outcomes
- Developmental and/or commercial success - achieving otherwise unattainable outcomes
- Relationship - leveraging the investment in working together to take advantage of new opportunities
- Reputation - enhancing each partner's stature as a partner of choice
This framework for high performing alliances can shape an alliance strategic plan and team charter to closely tie assessment results to management actions and skill development efforts.
The VitalSigns service is based on a standard library of questions that are tailored to match the strategic intent of the alliance, its current operating objectives, and the stage of alliance lifecycle. The language in the questions is edited to match the nomenclature of the alliance. Certain of the questions were developed and tested in collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals and Astellas.
The results are reported out in a slide deck that integrates charts, graphs, tables and participant comments to provide management with a complete picture of the effectiveness of alliance operations. The results of the assessment are shared with team members in a two to three hours workshop designed to develop a focused action plan for improving the effectiveness of the alliance. These sessions are conversations that otherwise would not occur. They inform and inspire alliance team members to achieve higher levels of success.
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