Building Alliances

One of my most favorite types of work is  alliance development.

What is an alliance?  An alliance is an agreement between two or more entities in which they agree to act in certain ways in order to achieve a common goal or goals.

Reflecting the times,  alliance development is becoming increasingly important as organizations seek to accomplish their missions and goals with fewer (and fewer) resources.

Nanette’s 7 Steps to Alliance Development

1. Be Clear of Your Objectives that, hopefully, are part of your organization’s well-thought out strategy to carry out your mission.

2. Identify and Assess Potential Alliances and remember that often the best partners are those with complementary skills.

3. Reach Out to Potential Alliance partners and have preliminary discussions about your organization, goals and objectives.

4. Date each other and get to know the organization and its people. Successful alliances are all about relationships.

5. Formalize your agreement so each party understands clearly what they are expected to do.

6. Evaluate the alliance when you accomplish an objective (e.g. passage of a piece of legislation, hosting a successful event, completion of joint campaign) and determine if the alliance worked and if so, then move on to #7.

7. Consider other Areas of Cooperation with the same partner or entities in their network.