Governance bodies are often described as an oversight and business review function, especially the most senior executive committee. Their meetings become sessions when partners get updates, review progress, and rubber stamp plans that functional subcommittees and working teams develop. But in the alliances that are the most successful, governance is more than oversight. Governance is strategic leadership. Leadership drives execution. And execution is how alliances realize value. They underperform when execution is undisciplined.

Governance as the Engine of Execution

In collaborative business relationships that are essentially transactional, meaning the money goes one way and the funding party can direct the other party, even if there are aspects of their work that are collaborative, governance as business review can be appropriate. In the codevelopment, cocommercialization relationships common in biopharma, that type of governance is completely insufficient. The governance bodies in these co-co relationships, as they are known, especially the Joint Steering Committee (JSC) or whatever the senior-most governance body is called, together with the alliance professionals and the leads of contractual subcommittees are the leadership of the alliance. They need to fulfill that role and focus on value realization. That means they have a shared responsibility to be mindful of the execution effectiveness conditions that are determinant of value realization. Strategic misalignment often derails these conditions, and it is generally about how the alliance will achieve its objectives, and how much investment it will take to realize them. Accordingly, governance must provide clarity, alignment, and momentum all the while fostering trust. Performing at this higher level is what separates high performing alliances from those that struggle with delays, rework, duplication, and frustrated teams that churn and swirl without making progress.

Defining Execution Effectiveness

We’ve previously defined what our research has identified as six execution effectiveness conditions. See Episodes 2, 3, and 4 of our video series, Partnering on the Edge: The Hard Work of Partnering Well. All are relevant to governance and it, as leadership, must drive them. In this piece, we focus on the leadership behaviors that support them. These include:

• Developing shared understanding – partners can’t align if they don’t similarly understand what they are trying to achieve, or the challenge they are attempting to resolve
• Common understanding of the plan and path forward – ensures that the partners align, they truly have the same view of how they will proceed, the assumptions underlying the agreed path, and the data to collect to validate or invalidate those assumptions so that any required shifts can be timely made
• Unified messaging across teams and partners – this signals the execution effectiveness condition of cross-organizational alignment and requires leaders align on a message, that a single source of information is readily available, and there is no back-channeling communicating dissatisfaction with the agreed path and plan forward
• Joint accountability – a commitment that each partner has specific responsibilities and that these will be measured and reported at each governance meeting
• Patient-centric prioritization and decision making – this behavior goes without saying, but it can be very helpful to explicitly “bring the patient into the room” when hard decisions need to be made

These are observable behaviors that teams can commit to and leaders can drive. They don’t happen organically. It takes leadership.

The Execution Effectiveness Conditions Governance Often Fails

 We see many co-co alliances where strategy is misaligned and they fall into dysfunction. They may still agree on what they want to achieve, even if that North Star has been reshaped by clinical and regulatory reality as development progresses. These days, global pricing and policy realities are also having a real impact. What they are misaligned about is either how they will achieve that North Star, how much is needed to be invested to achieve – and often both. The governance dynamic that emerges then exhibits some or all of the following patterns:

• Governance that reviews and discusses instead of decides
• People with no active role in meetings attending because it is the only way they get information, stifling candid discussion among the true meeting participants
• Inconsistent communication across partners, including meeting minutes that take weeks to finalize
• Escalation either too frequently or too late
• Teams that leave meetings unclear on who owns which actions
• Rework and ambiguity that causes confusion and delay

These aren’t people problems. They are execution issues that alliance professionals are responsible for fixing to ensure intended value is realized.

Steps to Transform Governance

The following are alliance management basics, but in the daily scrum of drug development and commercialization, it is easy for them to be overlooked. Refocusing on them can deliver huge dividends.

Value creating alignment – Teams can find alignment at the lowest common denominator, or it can be value creating. By getting to the root interests and assumptions of each partner you are more likely to align on a plan and a path forward that each partner truly and enthusiastically supports and that creates the most value important to each partner

• Build discipline into decision making practices – The most important execution effectiveness condition is decision clarity and velocity. Delayed decisions are the number one cause of business value loss. Ensure there is clear ownership, criteria, timelines, and accountability for every governance decision. Plan them. Break them into pieces. Align timelines with internal governance when the partners need their approval. Have clear escalation triggers (another of the six execution effectiveness conditions) at every level of teams and governance. A decision is not a discussion. It is a commitment to act.
• Communicate with purpose – Communication is not just sharing information. It is how leaders build alignment. Governance bodies set the tone and the standard for transparency, one team messaging, and reinforcement of patient-centric priorities.

The Alliance Professionals’ Execution Mandate

The biopharma environment is more complex, more interdependent, and more time‑sensitive than ever. Alliances are no longer “nice to have”—they are essential engines of innovation and patient impact.

But complexity without discipline creates risk. Ask yourself, is governance:

• Creating clarity or confusion?
• Enabling execution or slowing it down?
• Reinforcing alignment or allowing drift?
• Protecting value or putting it at risk?

Governance is not process; it is leadership. It is execution. It is how alliances realize value.