The Alliance Pulse Barometer (APB)

Can you tell :

1. whether your Alliance is really healthy?

2. what the people involved in the Alliance are really thinking?

3. whether the business really sees value in what you are doing and supports you?

Today there is indisputable evidence that Alliances that endure are associated with open, high trust work environments and effective relationships between people : leadership teams, employees, suppliers, customers, distributors, and stakeholders at all levels. However, specific organisational imperatives and/or human nature doesn’t always make this easy. In a formal situation a person may say one thing openly, but informally or inwardly, may say or mean something very different.

It is extremely difficult to read all the subtle nuances and codes that make up the social system (communications, information transfer, behaviours, beliefs etc) within which Alliances, Alliance Leadership Teams and Alliance Operatives perform.

The Alliance Pulse Barometer (APB) is an innovative, easy-to-use, cost-effective approach that measures the critical intangibles most Alliance Managers have to either guess at, or call in cumbersome, costly and time-consuming survey research, requiring specialist interpretative skills and knowledge. The APB makes information on key Alliance intangibles available at all levels of any Alliance . It helps to create a high trust work environment where real issues, expectations and concerns are brought to the surface, worked through by the relevant people and resolved. It helps to also create an Alliance environment where issues are addressed at the lowest possible organisational level supporting empowerment and avoiding escalations and the attendant penalties be they in terms of cost, time and/or emotion.

The Alliance Pulse Barometer may be used to :

monitor the extent to which espoused values and agreed behavioural norms are in place and operating effectively
measure the impact of change initiatives to improve Alliance effectiveness
support the development of high trust environments between members of Alliance leadership teams
provide a tool for Alliance leadership teams to manage the health of the various Alliance social systems and networks
identify Alliance hot spots and requiring support and/or other intervention
or simply be used to :
provide a regular window into the health of the Alliance and track its development over time.

The Alliance Pulse Barometer is much more than a surveying tool.

While the APB scans the alliance for fast, accurate information on key intangibles, it has been designed to be much more. The APB incorporates an approach designed to keep organisation’s energised around the Alliance and help break out of old paradigms. It is configured to focus alliance leadership around the things that really matter within their field of influence or control.

Pulse questions used in the APB are typically combinations of :

key questions found through research and experience to be fundamental indicators of alliance health (eg ‘We openly share relevant information with our alliance partner and proactively make the effort to avoid mistaken impressions’, or, ‘Our own behaviour depicts the required spirit of the alliance to our own people.’)

and/or

questions to explore, challenge and change perceptions, attitudes and/or beliefs on issues with high face validity that are relevant to the alliances particular stage of development. (eg. ‘Our management of the alliance is agile and we respond well to emerging needs.’ or, ‘Human error is not the cause of major problems in this alliance’)

The Alliance Pulse Barometer is an investment in Alliance Excellence.

The APB taps into a wellspring of information and enables :

key alliance intangibles to be measured and tracked,
a comprehensive map of alliance health to be developed with hot spots readily highlighted,
scarce alliance leadership resources to be invested in the right areas,
the creation of supportive broader business environments that nurture alliance success (eg highlight the impact of any short term operational decisions on alliance health)
discretionary emotional energy released to support alliance effectiveness at all levels

Summary of Key Features…

A powerful tool to generate energy and facilitate dialogue – flags issues and starts conversations to explore changes, impacts and opportunities,
Provides information to identify and drive improvement opportunities at multiple levels - organisational wide through local; work group,
May be fully customised (language/terminology, question set focus, proforma and report formats and apprearance, security etc) to meet organisational specific requirements
Results presented in dashboard format (eg traffic light) to readily identify key areas for improvement with drill down functionality to explore and issues and trends,
Questions focus on organisation-relevant factors creating strong face validity with respondents and users; that is question set customised to user requirements/situation,
Minimal respondent effort with no ‘behind the scenes’ administration effort,
Simple and user friendly questions and data format; immediate feedback,
Information ‘owned’ by Line Managers/Workgroup promoting localised accountability to act,
Web browser based ensuring that there is only ‘one version of the truth’,
Simple graphs used to promote intuitive understanding,
May include security provisions to restrict access,
Can be used in conjunction with more detailed analytical tools and diagnostics administered over longer timeframes

View/Complete Alliance Pulse Barometer Proforma Example,
View Alliance Pulse Barometer Summary Results Example ,
View Alliance Pulse Barometer Detailed Results Example

Want to know more about the Project Pulse Barometer, please contact us