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ALLIANCES 2017 7 through the assessment as well. "This shows the client is also willing to change their behaviours and work col- laboratively. Oen, it's the client that needs to go the furthest distance on the journey of changing their collaborative behaviours." Moran says the workshops entail the participants doing various exercises which are assessed. There is no feedback as it is part of the procurement process. "We might run a scenario; have some conversations about collaboration what they think; we'll get them to do some exercises; we get actors to come in and play out customer service-type behaviours. "All sorts of things that move people out of their comfort zones. It's interesting to see where people can lose their temper or start talking over other people. We do it in a nice way – we don't try to catch people out. We just allow a space for their true behaviours to take place." Moran says the assessments are about helping the client to see the top level of the bidding organisation down to the people who will be working on projects. He says that sometimes people will go through the assessment and think that is it. They think they can collaborate. But it is about what they do when everybody teams up. How do they bring the people together to understand each other even better? "Sometimes that gets missed a bit because people don't understand each other. They don't understand the differ- ences they're bringing and I think you oen find that people think alliancing is about being nice to each other. "It's definitely not. It's about having positive challenge to get to the right out- come. 'We've got a better way of doing it than this', 'gosh, that could save us X million pounds if we did it like that, great'. "Parking egos is a very strong part of alliancing. That's very hard for senior people because they've been successful in their careers. What alliances are say- ing is that they've got to park that – we're all equal." Moran says alliancing and behav- ioural assessments are a leap of faith that if done for the right reasons will sus- tain the change for a very long time. "It becomes a step change in the way an organisation thinks and acts which is why it's hard. You constantly find that as an organisation makes a shi to alliance or collaborate with its partners, it has to look internally as well. Is it siloed as an organisation? "It's a big step, but a very powerful step." Alliancing is about 'parking egos' and working together to create a common goal for the client

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