This document provides guidelines for successful strategic partnerships between companies. It notes that while partnerships are increasingly common, the failure rate remains high between 60-70%. The key to success is establishing trust, agreeing on a shared vision and expectations, and leveraging complementary skills between the partners. Additionally, partnerships require a focus on collaborative behaviors, managing internal stakeholders, developing metrics to track progress, and being prepared to adjust course over time through continued communication and leadership.

1. Guidelines for Successful Strategic Partnership
Over the course of my career, the importance and emphasis of partner relationships in technology has
changed radically. New startups challenge incumbents, technology advances force sluggish companies
to embrace change and consumers creates an imperative for new business models due to the volumes
of information readily available to them. To meet these challenges, corporate alliances and
partnerships increase by some 25% a year and those alliances account for nearly a third of many
companies’ revenue and value—yet the failure rate for alliances hovers between 60% and 70%.
The success of partnerships is a positive reflection of the business acumen for both companies.
Business success for partnerships doesn’t come from contracts, formal metrics or structures – it
comes from the very foundation of business success.
1. Establish Trust
This is non‐negotiable in any successful partnership. Trust that decisions and commitments
will be made based on our mutual understanding of success and our goals. Trust that actions
and words will match.
2. Agree on vision and set expectations.
Nothing derails a partnership quicker than working at cross purposes. Agree on both the short
term understanding of the value proposition, and a long‐term understanding of how success
will work. Both companies cannot view the partnership solely as a demand generation vehicle
for other.
3. Identify Complementary and compatible Skills. Leverage differences for success.
Companies ally because they have key differences they want to leverage—different markets,
customers, know‐how, processes, and cultures. Each firm focuses on what they do best and
creating sustainable competitive advantage. Differences bring strength. Focus on the
complementary skills and capabilities to drive positive results and create less conflict.
4. Focus less on defining the business plan and more on how you’ll work together.
Understand how each company operates and how they make decisions. The partners should
use that understanding to establish guidelines for working together. Invest the time upfront to
jointly define the relationship you want. Business goals, contract terms, and formal
governance structures are table stakes.
5. Go beyond formal governance structures to encourage collaborative behavior
Leaders must take an active role to openly foster collaborative behavior among all the people
who work as strategic partners. The attitude and actions of leadership sets the tone for
behavior for those who really own the responsibility for success. Personal collaboration and
trust helps prevent partners from defensively withholding information from each other for
fear that it will be used as evidence of incompetence or poor performance.

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6. Spend as much time on managing internal stakeholders as on managing the relationship with
your partner.
Maintain commitment from and alignment among business units and functions in your
own company that are affected by the alliance or on whose contributions its success
depends. The biggest barriers to trust are mixed messages, broken commitments, and
unpredictable, inconsistent behavior from different segments of a partner organization.
7. Develop metrics for alliance progress.
Good results on the journey to success – the leading indicators of success – can sustain
corporate commitment and collaboration precisely when it is needed the most.
8. Stay the course and be prepared for course corrections
Successful partnerships are developed over time. Missed expectations and
miscommunication will occur. As technology, customers and the market changes, course
corrections are expected. Communication, collaboration and executive leadership
maintained for the duration result in success.
Shirley Hunter
October 2015
281‐300‐3958