Bridge Builders: How Alliance Managers Can Transcend Cultural Differences

When I mentioned this panel on cultural differences at last month’s ASAP BioPharma Conference in Boston to someone who wasn’t in the room, their response was something along the lines of “It’s a perennial topic, and a good one, but it’s very hard to not have a US-centric perspective and treat other cultures as exactly that—other.”

It’s a fair point, and indeed, one of the panelists echoed that view.

“Cultural difference is not about ‘them’; it’s about you. It’s how others react to you,” said Amy Tatsutani, CA-AM, PhD, executive director of alliance management at Gilead Sciences.

In the panel discussion, titled “Cultural Intelligence: Successful Cross-Cultural Collaboration in Biotech Alliances,” on the second and final day of the conference, each of the presenters had their own relevant experiences, from both personal and business contexts, in navigating the nuances of cultural difference.

Moderator Mark Coflin, CSAP, biopharma veteran and now president of Alliance Partnering Consultants, remembered growing up in Canada and trying to learn French—or “Franglais,” as he jokingly put it—to better interact with the francophone community there. He worked for the Japanese-owned Takeda and the Chinese-owned Simcere, among others, before hanging out his consulting shingle.

Gisel Lopez, CA-AM, who recently became associate director of alliance management at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, was born in Peru and worked there for Sanofi before coming to the United States and managing both global research and codevelopment/cocommercial alliances at various organizations.

Brian Stewart, CA-AM, recently became executive director of alliance management and global business development at Daiichi Sankyo, worked in the past for Merck KGaA, and also has experience working in Asia.

Tatsutani, for her part, was born and raised in Thailand before being sent to a girls’ school in Dallas and spending summers in the American Midwest. She described herself at this point as “70 percent American, 30 percent Southeast Asian.” In her working life at Gilead and elsewhere she has managed global alliances from Latin America to Asia and beyond.

What’s Your CQ?

The panelists defined “cultural intelligence” as the capability of working in and relating to “culturally diverse situations,” and Coflin argued that while emphasis is often put on alliance managers’ having emotional intelligence, or EQ, and rightly so, “we propose that cultural intelligence is just as important.”

In fact, Coflin noted that cultural diversity can be found everywhere—on your teams, in your company, and outside your organization among your partners and potential partners. Understanding cultural diversity and differences helps increase harmony within your team and with partners, encourages empathy, and drives innovation and greater alliance effectiveness, he added.

Lopez urged looking at each person as an individual who is the product and combination of their heritage, cultural background and influences, personal and work experiences, as well as their country and company cultures. In her view, people and teams should be seen as part of a “greater ecosystem” involving their organizations, partners, countries, and so on.

The panelists cited a book by Erin Meyer, The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business (2014), which lays out “the average approach of a particular country” or culture across a range of behaviors—from communication to giving feedback to making decisions to scheduling meetings to establishing trust—and notes where particular cultures tend to fall on a spectrum, such as direct versus indirect feedback or linear versus flexible time and scheduling.

“Right Now” Isn’t Always Right Now

And the cultural differences and nuances alliance professionals must be sensitive to are not only those derived from ethnic or national cultures. Stewart recalled working for a long-established big pharma company and partnering with a budding Silicon Valley startup around companion diagnostics. In addition to resource constraints, different styles of working, disparate geographic locations, and the need for each side to educate the other on their ways, there were time challenges as well—or perhaps perceptions of time would be more accurate.

“Working for a small biotech, everything’s right now,” Stewart said. “It’s not going to be ‘right now’ at a large organization.” So the task of alliance managers becomes to help their leaders and governance members understand these differences in order to “avoid disaster,” as Coflin put it. And, he cautioned, “You’re not trying to make one company into another company. The best way is to recognize and manage the differences.”

“We as alliance managers can act as that cultural bridge,” added Tatsutani.

Be Curious, Read the Room, Listen—and Explain the Why

There are various ways of doing that, said the panelists. Stewart encouraged following up due diligence on a potential partner with “cultural diligence,” talking to one’s counterpart and seeking to understand their organization—and asking, “Are we really listening to our partner?”

Lopez advised always looking at “who is present in the room,” since diverse teams may have different ways of communicating and different approaches to trust, risk aversion, and decision making, among other areas. Then, according to Tatsutani, you have to “read the room”—and then you may need to “explain the why” or the context of decisions or actions that may strike others as odd, inexplicable, or even offensive.

What can help? More face-to-face meetings, luckily more feasible now after the worst of Covid-19. Also, cultural intelligence trainings can be conducted with teams, and customized for specific partnering situations. The partner may be enlisted to help or lead such a training, which might include getting to know various national or religious holidays and what they mean to individuals—and to their workflow, scheduling, and decision making.

Finally, Lopez said, “Express curiosity. Talk to your partner. People are proud to share their heritage. Ask them to be a translator. Find an ally to make a better environment for your alliance.”