Alliance Performance The Management Drives® methodology is particularly effective at providing analysis of the culture within an alliance, and highlighting issues that relate to the effectiveness of the alliance and its performance. Extensive studies of the causes of Alliance success or failure have been deployed into the Management Drives® structure to enable analysis and understanding of the effectiveness of existing alliances. An alliance is any business arrangement in which the success of one partner is tied to the success of both. One significantly under-appreciated implication of this view of alliances is that what really sets them apart from other business arrangements is the importance of the relationship between the partners. For contracted alliances, where a separate alliance organisation is created, the focus must not only be on the relationship between the Alliance Partners, but also the relationships and culture that develops within the Alliance organisation. Managing these relationships and culture poses a number of challenges. They keep Alliances from realising their potential and achieving the Client’s objectives that initially led to the selection of an alliance as the preferred procurement approach. There are several symptoms that indicate an alliance is broken. Interpersonal problems, an "us" and "them" mentality, the failure of team members to communicate critical information, high attrition rates and, most importantly, failure to reach target milestones and timelines are all signals of relationship breakdown. Unfortunately, these symptoms often go unrecognised, and most organizations only become aware they have a broken alliance once one of the two underlying causes becomes so obvious it can no longer be ignored . Good cultural management has to be a part of how the alliance does business. A remarkable number of alliances that have well-defined processes for activities -- such as sourcing and procurement, project management, quality assurance, construction management or asset management -- leave the management of culture to chance - something like the flowchart to the right:
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