Building Successful Alliances: Five Case Studies
Consensus-based alliances can solve complex challenges faster and more creatively than any one organization alone. Presented here are case studies on five alliances that illustrate the effectiveness of alliance building, demonstrating the significant outcomes that can be achieved by incorporating diverse perspectives on a given issue. Though each alliance’s objective is unique, they involve distinct alignments of “elements” and “principles” upon which rests each alliance’s success. We invite you to review these case studies and contact Leavitt Partners to help you develop an alliance that creates solutions and drives meaningful action.
The Gonzales Alliance began with a common pain: gang violence and killings in a Trinidadian and Tobagonian city. Joseph Gordon, then a young Roman Catholic priest, acted as convener of stature, and brought citizens together to calm the gang wars and address their social consequences. Action was driven by a community-establish plan, which gave them a common purpose, and a group of committed leaders, who ultimately understood that they could leverage political capital and community involvement as an alternative to violence.
The Pharmaceutical Distribution Security Alliance began with a two-part common pain—an increase in trafficking in stolen or counterfeited drugs post-9/11 and an unworkable, single-state regulatory proposal for tracking and transferring drug product data. Multi-sector, pharmaceutical supply chain players, and eventually the federal government, came together in the Leavitt Partners-run alliance to navigate state and federal dynamics and develop consensus legislation, regulatory recommendations, and industry best practices. Following successful passage of the statute and implementing regulations, a successor alliance was established—the Partnership for DSCSA Governance—to define and drive the adoption of an interoperability framework and ongoing FDA interaction.
Utah’s One Intermountain Breast Care Center was not operating as efficiently as it could, bringing pain points to both the institution and patients. Serving as convener, Dr. Brett Parkinson drove the effort to overhaul the Center’s protocols. His use of Leavitt Partners’ alliance methodology became the backbone of bringing together departments across the Center as they updated technology and worked to reorder procedures to improve care while reducing the overall time needed to provide that care. As a result, the Center now provides care to more women more efficiently and with less pain.
As smart home devices began to grow in number and popularity, their various and incompatible operating systems frustrated consumers. Major players in the space, including Apple, Google, Amazon, and Samsung, came together under the Connectivity Standards Alliance to work towards interoperability via a universal protocol. A former Leavitt Partners alliance leader, Mike Nelson was brought in to serve as a representative of substance on the project. In 2023, products supported by the protocol began making it to consumers and, as of this year, more than 500 companies have committed to supporting the standard, increasing the number of supported products in the pipeline.
The CARIN Alliance was established with the defined purpose of rapidly advancing the ability for consumers and their authorized caregivers to easily get, use, and share their digital health information when, where, and how they want to achieve their goals. As the internet and digital health capabilities grew, Leavitt Partners, an HMA Company and a group of multi-sector CARIN Alliance members and government representatives have successfully advanced the ability for a consumer to aggregate their health information from any U.S. health plan or provider using an application of their choice.
Pathways Through Polarization by Finding Allies and Building Alliances
Building on the success of Finding Allies, Building Alliances, our forthcoming book, Pathways Through Polarization by Finding Allies and Building Alliances, will share insights and principles we have gleaned over the past decade and offer a more detailed roadmap for collaborating to solve your organization’s most difficult challenges.