University alliances: seven criteria for success

Wednesday, 30 March 2022

“Fifty percent of strategic alliances fail in the first five years.”

This was the premise of a paper I came across in 2015 when researching the set-up of UNSW’s first alliance under its 2025 Strategy, the PLuS Alliance. That headline stuck with me, and six years down the track, with a portfolio of alliances and the associated battle scars and triumphs, I realise how easy it can be for an alliance to fail or succeed.

As the higher education sector evolves under Covid-19, we are already experiencing changes to the way we work, teach and learn, and conduct research.

University alliances could and should contribute to this transformation as the sector resets in the face of financial and resource constraints and changing business models.

This piece draws from firsthand experience of setting up strategic institutional alliances globally and locally and notes seven criteria to set up new alliances in higher education for success.

Understand the need for a new partnership

Clarity on why you’d want a partner or partners is critical. Identify the gaps in expertise or experience you’re looking to fill that can only occur in partnership (e.g., addressing education inequality, climate change). Then make a list of potential partners who may assist.

Ask ‘What added benefit can be delivered in partnership?’ Seek to embrace and leverage differences between you and your potential partner(s).

An alliance needs to deliver more than the sum of its parts.

Find partners with shared institutional values

Finding partners that fill gaps in expertise isn’t sufficient. Understanding your shared values are essential. Values driven culture and decision-making set the tone for collaboration in the partnership.

Have early discussions with a potential partner regarding their own values and the shared values for the alliance to allow a strong foundation for governance, decision making, collaboration and operations.

Key traits include flexibility, agility, diversity of thought, genuine collaborative intent, inclusivity, compromise, the ability to listen, and robust decision-making processes.

Agree on a common purpose and goals

Building trust between senior institutional leaders of the alliance is critical.

Leaders drive an alliance’s vision, ambition and goals. Top-down alliances demonstrate institutional commitment at the highest level but are not enough to sustain them in the long run.

Involving engaged and passionate university members in setting purpose and goals ensures alignment with individual university strategies and greatly assists with buy-in at the levels below. Once the purpose and goals are clearly articulated, the strategy, structure, funding and activities can then be easily aligned.

Set up fit-for-purpose governance and impact-focussed performance measures

Alliance governance structures don’t need to be complicated. The larger the alliance, the simpler its governance and decision making should be. While an Alliance secretariat or central function can be independent of partner institutions, strategic alliance decisions must be approved by decision makers at the partner institutions.

Setting up Alliance Boards or Executive Committees that comprise university leaders authorised to make decisions for their institutions enables this.

Set up realistic performance measures aligned to goals and strategy but recognise that new alliances, like start-ups, take time to establish and enable collaboration for results.

Alliance performance measure should be impact focused. Where there is a mandate to become financially sustainable, revenue targets should be clearly defined.

Resource operations adequately

During setup, it is important for partners to commit adequate seed funding to enable operations and pilot activities. Further commitment towards staff buyouts for key projects, and in-kind provision of infrastructure, systems and resources should also be considered.

Partners require autonomy in how they operationalise the alliance within their own institution; however, dedicated contacts including an Alliance Manager or Coordinator (and team) with a collaboration and problem-solving mindset is an asset to the partnership.

To drive impact, teams should be encouraged to work with speed and agility, and in test environments. Impactful alliances are exploratory in their very nature and best outcomes are achieved in safe experimentation.

Execute a Communications and Engagement strategy

An alliance communications and engagement strategy is as critical as its overarching strategy. No matter how lofty the ambition of the alliance or commendable the activities, if no one knows, it’s irrelevant.

Along with goals and governance, implementing a stakeholder engagement (internal and external) plan for buy-in, participation, funding or support is a key success criterion. A clear narrative of purpose, value and impact is core to the communications and engagement strategy. This activity should be embedded as a responsibility for all key alliance staff and project teams.

Identify communication channels for the alliance and at the partners to enable dissemination of key messages.

Set clear success measures and timeframes for evaluation

Alliance success doesn’t happen overnight. Managing expectations of senior leaders around ROI are crucial and an important Board-level conversation.

Depending on the ambitions of an alliance, benefits may take up to 10 years to materialise and may not be solely based on financial return. Partners must consider if they are willing to stay for the long term and formalise their commitment via agreements.

Alliances involves ambiguity, challenges, and rewards. Keeping alliance teams motivated and appropriately resourced is crucial to driving progress, engagement, and innovation. Boards and leaders should permit alliance initiatives to fail quickly while innovating and celebrate big and small wins along the way.

Bringing diverse groups of people together under strategic alliances can add enormous benefits and value to organisations. Strong leadership, appropriate operations and impactful projects in alliances lead to very rewarding experiences for institutions and all involved.

Article authored by Vinita Chanan. Director of Alliances at UNSW Sydney, and a member of the NUW Alliance Management Committee.

To read other thought leadership articles such as this please see the NUW Alliance Biannual Report.

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