Like many biopharma organizations, ours has gone through quite a bit of change over the last few years: organizational restructuring, changes in the leadership team, rounds of layoffs, and more. The good news is that things seem to have turned a corner, and we are happy to be seeing positive results.
But change is a constant. So when it comes to our organizations, how do we help our partners get through it?
My team and I have had a lot of practice with this recently. In our organization, business units have been created, adjusted, dissolved, and replaced with others, sometimes in response to our partners’ feedback. Our leadership team has changed, turnover has occurred, and other changes have appeared on our radar. Not all of it affects our partners directly, but internal change must be carefully explained to partners so they understand how it affects them—or if it does.
Interpreters and diplomats
Organizations experience change for many reasons. Markets are constantly in flux, leadership turns over, strategies shift, and so on. Whatever the change may be, it is the job of alliance management to communicate it to partners so they understand how we will move forward together. We are the interpreters, the communicators, the “master diplomats,” if you will. It is our job to reassure them: “We know this is a lot of change. But our partnership is still a priority, and the people you’ve been working with day to day remain the same.”
When there is change internally, my first approach is to seek out executive leaders to understand the change and how it will affect our team. What are the senior executives’ expectations of us? Are they going to step in to be involved in partnerships, or are they trusting us to manage the relationship as we think best? Either way is fine and we can adjust, but I need to understand it first so that I can convey those expectations and the new situation to my team. In our case, we are typically given fairly wide latitude to do what we think is most beneficial for our partners, so that gives us a direction and alleviates some of the fears my team may have.
Once we understand the internal change and its implications, it’s then up to alliance management to communicate to partners, tailoring the message to each one. For example, we may need to let them know that, while the people their executives are connecting with may change or there are changes in the composition of the joint steering committee, it does not affect how we work together on a daily basis. In fact, often in the midst of significant change, we’ve pulled in very experienced senior leaders for the JSC who are well known to the partners and have longstanding relationships with them. That has been tremendously reassuring.
From “no big deal” to “why is this happening?”
For partners who have experienced their own internal changes, this is an easier conversation. They’ll just say, “Yep, you’ve had changes. We have, too. No big deal. That’s business, and we understand.” They can relate, and they know that our fundamental commitment to each other and to the partnership does not waver.
But for those partners who haven’t gone through big changes, it may come as more of a shock. Their response may be: “What’s going on? Why is this happening? What does it mean?” We have to be sensitive in our messaging and reassure them, understanding that they have legitimate concerns about how our internal change will affect our collaborations with them. It’s all about having organizational awareness and understanding our partners’ company cultures and how they may differ from ours.
When change occurs, we come to our partners not with a blank slate, but with recommendations based on how we already know they like to work with us. We might change the cadence of meetings, for example. Will that work for them? What other changes in our processes and approaches would work best for them? We are thoughtful about that and can tailor our recommendations to their particular situation. That “insider knowledge” of our partners’ organizations, cultures, and operating styles really helps.
Taking partners into account
Where it gets tricky is with a brand-new partner. To them, change may feel like a crisis, and you haven’t yet developed the knowledge of each other or built up sufficient trust. How are they reacting? What is their perspective? Are they being transparent with their concerns, or is there more to it than appears on the surface? You have to figure that out, so dealing with change becomes the first test of the partnership. Once you get through it successfully, it tends to get easier as you go along. But it’s a learning experience when you’re in the middle of it. A partnership is like a new bank account: you want to put money in the bank first, building it up, not going into debt and digging yourself out of a hole.
Ideally, we want partners to hear about changes from us, not somewhere else. But that is not always possible, since we ourselves sometimes learn about significant changes in a company press release, and for legal reasons we may need to be careful about what and how much we share. At our company, we’re fortunate that they will tend to put out not just a press release but a set of FAQs for employees. We can use those to create our talking points and customize them to help our various partners understand what’s going on. And we can leverage our senior leadership to find out more as needed.
Layoffs, for example, are a reality in our industry, and partners may have questions when they learn about them. Often, we can confirm there are layoffs in specific areas, but they do not affect the alliance management team and the people they work with. At other times, of course, layoffs do affect alliance management or there’s turnover that affects those relationships. That is where we work to strengthen existing connections and ensure continuity. Since I’ve been here for ten years, for example, I am a familiar face and can introduce partners to their new contacts in these situations and help guide the transition.
No nuclear options
As alliance leaders, we serve the company we work for, and that will always be our first priority. At the same time, we’re the ones who are communicating with and reassuring our partners in times of change, getting the right message at the right time to the right people in the right way so they can receive it, understand it, and not have it affect our partnership adversely.
This “diplomatic” role of alliance management can be challenging. It must be proactive, thoughtful, and nuanced. Looking at diplomacy around the world, we’re nowhere near on the level of negotiating nuclear arms deals—but there are moments when it can feel almost as fraught! The collaborative relationships we work hard to maintain are important, valuable, and all too human. And that’s where alliance leadership really shines.
Katherine Ellison, CA-AM, is senior director of alliance management at Illumina.
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