Relatively early in my Alliance Management career, I began managing an ongoing pharmaceutical collaboration that was in distress.
The partnership involved global co-development and a U.S. co-promotion. Although the alliance had been operating for over 10 years, recent team and company restructurings at both companies had dramatically altered the key day to day functional counterparts.
It quickly became clear that both the development/regulatory teams and the commercial teams faced specific issues on which they could not come to agreement. Alliance Management (AM) held several meetings with the specific joint teams to try to come to a resolution, but each team held firmly to their own views.
Trust waned as corporate priorities shifted
The collaborative mindset and trust which had been built over many years in partnership had waned as organizational priorities shifted and team members, who had not worked in an alliance structure before, adhered to an “us” and “them” mentality. Compromises were eventually found on these issues, but the process was rocky and could have been timelier.
Teaming-up to relaunch
My Alliance counterpart and I decided to initiate an Alliance re-launch. We weren’t sure how this idea would be received, acknowledging that everyone is very busy and might resist taking time out of their schedules. We first gained the support of our Joint Steering Committee (JSC) leads, who fortunately had been with the partnership from day one and fully supported the idea.
Aligning on goals
Alliance Management worked with our teams on aligning on 5 joint alliance goals for the next year which were endorsed by the JSC and were used to open the re-launch meeting.
These goals and underlying metrics were subsequently folded into a scorecard that was tracked following the relaunch. The relaunch was a half-day offsite meeting, with the leads for each area of the partnership. An external facilitator can add value to this type of meeting if the budget allows.
Charting the course for how we work together
Throughout our time together we focused on how to work together, especially, ground rules for communication and meetings, decision making protocols, issue resolution, the escalation process, and lessons learned from the recent challenges. Each sub-team also had a roundtable to focus on their specific area of the partnership. Time was provided over lunch to just get to know one another better.
Following the re-launch, the partnership operated much more smoothly. I can’t say there weren’t bumps in the road, but they were met with a more collaborative posture and understanding of the value the partnership brings.
This article was written by Katy Kuipers, Director - Pharma/Biotech Business Development, Alliance Management, Commercial Strategy & Planning.
About the alliance leadership spotlight series
The alliance leadership spotlight series is a joint initiative of The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP) and allianceboard. It aims to showcase Alliance Management professionals taking the lead in addressing challenges and driving alliance success - to share experiences in the alliance management community.
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