4th December 2015
Launch of The Collaboration Project
Working together for success
Research shows that more than 50% of business partnerships between organisations fail to deliver their objectives. The Collaboration Project has been established to help businesses, academic institutions and other life science agencies to work more effectively in partnerships and alliances.
The Collaboration Project launched in Autumn 2015 and is a network aimed primarily at those involved in alliance management, project management and outsourcing. For anyone building a complex relationship between separate organisations, this new network aims to provide comprehensive help and advice to help overcome the many challenges such partnerships face.
Why do so many business partnerships fail to deliver?
Research published in 2015 surveyed organisations worldwide and listed many reasons, but amongst the leading causes were:
- Individual companies’ internal operating models do not adapt to support working with others
- Responsibility for the running of a business relationship is focused onto a very small alliance function or even a single person – instead of engaging the organisation as a whole
- Partners over-rely on the legal contract to cope with future issues, which are much better resolved on a day to day basis by building a strong relationships between the parties.
Evolution of The Collaboration Project
It came about following the meeting of its two founders, are John Faulkes and Mark Blanchard. John’s background is as an immunology scientist in the Pharma industry. This was followed by a long career in HR/learning & Development, focused primarily on cross-functional working and project management effectiveness. He has worked as a freelancer for 15+ years, and has delivered training, consulting and coaching for a wide variety of life science clients, big pharma, medium sized biotech, plus regional clusters such as One Nucleus and (hopefully in 2016!) MediWales. Day to day he works as a consultant for PPMLD Ltd.
Mark started his own business, Orca Partnership, in 2014. He began his corporate career as a chemist and progressed through various functional and management roles in the chemical and life science industries. He has worked as a sales executive, project manager and, alliance manager, before his final corporate role as an alliance Director for AstraZeneca. He has co-developed much of AZ’s alliance infrastructure, including senior level training programmes, leader level cross-functional team development and a platform of alliance management resources that are used throughout the organisation. Day to day Mark works as a trainer, consultant and coach for Orca Partnership, and also as a consultant for the BioPhorum group.
Both John and Mark have considerable experience in facilitating change in the partnering environment and have worked on large relevant projects. But the pace of change is something that was common ground for them; the statistics in the research quoted above haven’t changed a great deal in the last ten years or so. Hence they founded this new network as a catalyst to encourage future development.
There are networks already in existence, such as ASAP (the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals) that offer similar advice and guidance. The Collaboration Project aims to affiliate with all such bodies, but however it is the first association based in and focusing on work based in or sponsored out of Europe, where the cultural issues and philosophies of partnership working have their own distinctiveness.
How can we improve collaborative working?
All organisations are different from each another, in at least one or more ways. The journey to more effective partnering is diagnostic – and first starts internally, when a company takes some time to audit its strengths and development needs against common key factors.
Existing alliances and long-term outsourcing arrangements also benefit from diagnostic work, such as a health check.
Both of these interventions will generate a series of specific development needs. These might be addressed by training, of the relevant practitioners, or all company staff. Or perhaps consulting with company managers to develop new ways of working, improve systems and processes.
The Collaboration Project can broker highly reputable consultants who can perform audits and healthchecks; also who can advise companies at senior levels; can develop and run optimal training programmes.
In addition, the Collaboration Project web site offers access to online diagnostic tools. These are not as far-reaching as human intervention, but (in most cases) are free to access for members.
The one very special opportunity to get partnering right is at the outset – when an organisation is looking to establish a contract with another. In addition to the financial and corporate due diligence work that must be undertaken, a ‘partnership compatibility assessment’ can be highly useful. This addresses another, fundamental cause of problems: organisations who seem ideally suited may differ in terms of the ways they do operate, how they manage people, how they make decisions, how they approach risk – so called cultural differences. These can always be addressed. The real difficulties arise if they remain hidden and unexplored.
We’ve only just started – but join for free right now!
The Collaboration Project at this moment is a work in progress. Content and the network of members is building. But the network is open now to anyone and it is free to join.
Particularly encouraged are those who wish to make some form of contribution, in the way of writing up their experiences and ideas into online articles, or who will take part in online discussions.
You can check this out at www.thecollaborationproject.co.uk and go to the ‘Connect’ section or email for more information.