Why Strategic Supply Chains Underperform – And What You Can Do About It

Most supply chains aren’t broken – they’re misaligned. Despite process improvements and KPIs, many strategic relationships still suffer from missed targets, escalating costs, and wasted effort. The root cause? A failure to understand and manage what truly matters to each party.

The Strategic Relationship Curve reveals a predictable pattern of underperformance driven by misalignment – of interests, expectations, and context. As complexity increases across suppliers, tiers, and partners, so does the risk of breakdown.

The Strategic Relationship Curve

Success today isn’t about tighter control – it’s about deeper alignment. That means continuously surfacing, measuring, and acting on what each party values most.

This isn’t a soft skill – it’s a strategic shift. One that transforms supply chains from transactional networks into high-performance ecosystems.

The curve makes it visible. Value management makes it actionable.

Alignment, Resilience and Coherence (ARC) are the measures to harness complexity.

Supply chain success hinges on a shared foundation — common goals, trust, and clarity — that leaders instinctively grasp yet rarely have the opportunity to measure. 

In a world awash with transactional data, these intangibles slip through the cracks, breeding waste and risk.

Quantify them, and you empower decisive, impactful action for resilient outcomes, ignore them and you’ll experience one or more of these situations:

  • The foundational “why” of the relationship is vague, assumed, or no longer current.
  • Different assumptions about the world, each other, or what “good” looks like.
  • Emotional, interpersonal, or cultural disconnects erode collaboration.
  • Information doesn’t flow freely or meaningfully across boundaries.
  • Formal structures and governance are unclear, misaligned, or both.
  • Rewarding behaviors that don’t benefit (or harm) the relationship.

Yet misalignment often goes unrecognized as the root cause of serious problems — until it’s too late to act.

Diagnostic Content

Engage with a diagnostic which helps you (and your team) easily evaluate these supply chain matters:

  • Shared Vision
  • Role Clarity
  • Strategic Alignment
  • Success Metrics
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration
  • Information Flow
  • Constructive Conflict
  • Joint Problem-Solving
  • Process Standardization
  • Inventory & Cost Focus
  • Continuous Improvement
  • Technology Integration
  • Risk Awareness
  • Contingency Planning
  • Responsiveness to Disruption
  • Supplier & Partner Adaptability
  • Supplier Relationships
  • Customer Focus
  • Contract vs Collaboration
  • Long-Term Development

Your various perspectives are then gathered and reported back to you – uncovering misalignment and helping you align

ARC Value Management

Here are some examples of how the ARC Value Management Platform generates Diagnostic Solutions in Action:

Evaluate and select partners based on strategic alignment, cultural fit, and long-term value.

  • Strategic Partnering
    Prioritizes partners aligned with organizational strategy
  • Risk Reduction
    Incorporates criteria like financial stability, operational capabilities, and reputational risk
  • Robust Decision-Making
    Uses multidimensional fit analysis (strategic, operational, chemistry)
  • Sustainable Alliances
    Focuses on learning capabilities and cultural compatibility

Define, articulate, and communicate clear, measurable strategic goals and outcomes for each alliance.

  • Shared Purpose
    Establishes quantifiable strategic objectives, fostering mutual commitment
  • Value Co-creation
    Clarifies what matters to all concerned to drive strategic outcomes
  • Improved Communication
    Facilitates open, focused goal and information-sharing
  • Strategic Integration
    Aligns objectives with broader strategic intentions.

Dynamically track and assess the health, status, and performance of strategic alliances using metrics beyond revenue, providing data-driven insights for proactive management.

  • Proactive Insights
    Tracks strategic, operational, and relationship health, enabling early identification of issues or opportunities
  • Timely Interventions
    Supports adjustments to address misalignments or underperformance, improving outcomes
  • Resource Optimization
    Highlights high-value partnerships, guiding focus and investment across the portfolio
  • Accountability
    Uses scorecards and diagnostics to measure performance against strategic goals, ensuring alignment

Bring together Diagnostic results for individual strategic relationships, enabling value-led prioritization, resource allocation, and strategic analysis.

  • Resource Prioritization
    Focuses resources on high-value partnerships, optimizing limited capacity
  • Portfolio Value
    Aligns alliances with corporate strategy, maximizing collective impact and return
  • Systemic Insights
    Identifies common challenges or opportunities across partnerships, improving processes
  • Scalable Oversight
    Manages growing portfolios with tools to reduce complexity and enhance strategic control

Consolidate relationship information, knowledge, intelligence, expertise and experience – best practice available in a structured, shared resource.

  • Team Empowerment
    Equips professionals with situation-specific resources for relationship execution
  • Standardized Practices
    Promotes consistent processes in relationship management
  • Skill Gap Closure
    Harnessing practical ‘learn as you go’ expertise, with resources organized around activities
  • Sustainable Success
    Continuous persistence and improvement of internal relationship capabilities

A ‘shared space’ to facilitate joint innovation and knowledge-sharing between partners, aligning resources and expertise to develop new solutions or processes.

  • Innovation Accelerator
    Encourages co-creation of novel value-led solutions
  • Enhanced Collaboration
    Aligns partners through the things that matter, strengthening relationships and trust
  • Complexity Harnessing
    Provides complexity-aware generative constraints to promote People-Centred engagement
  • Value Amplification
    Creates long-term synergies, generating new value-inspired revenue streams or efficiencies

Identify, assess, monitor, and mitigate risk and uncertainty affecting strategic relationships.

  • Proactive Risk Mitigation
    Puts attention on areas of risk and uncertainty
  • Partnership Stability
    Harnesses complexity manifesting as PESTLE uncertainties
  • Protected Interests
    Introduces the intangibles that complement standard contract and risk management
  • Informed Strategies
    Enables holistic risk and uncertainty evaluation to secure strategic partnering decisions

Utilize value-led parameters, ideally framed at the outset of the relationship, for evidence-based, dispassionate management of relationship terminations or transitions.

  • Value Preservation
    Facilitates orderly exits with clear processes for knowledge transfer and asset allocation
  • Risk Minimization
    Reduces legal, financial, or reputational risks during terminations through structured agreements
  • Relationship Continuity
    Maintains positive exits, preserving opportunities for future partnerships
  • Lifecycle Completion
    Addresses a critical phase, ensuring strategic coherence throughout the lifecycle

Supply Chain Suffering From Waste, Cost, Risk & Failure

Unclear roles and decision-making authority

Fragmented leadership without unity or shared vision

Micro-management and centralised control

High staff turnover and inconsistent approaches

Poor communication flow from leadership

Lack of leadership ownership and accountability

Disconnection between leaders and operational realities

Blame-shifting instead of problem-solving

Culture of fear undermining effective decisions

No shared vision or stability in leadership

Widespread lack of trust in leadership

Leadership promises not followed through

Adverse impact on staff morale and well-being

Disconnect between leadership rhetoric and reality

Fear-based culture suppressing initiative and collaboration

Senior leaders seen as distant or invisible

Feedback not listened to or acted upon

Engagement varies wildly between sites

High leadership turnover disrupts relationships

Staff feel disempowered and disengaged

Communication seen as chaotic, unclear, and untimely

Over-reliance on mass emails (“blanket bombing”)

Important messages often lost or ignored

Lack of joint communication initiatives

Disconnection between corporate and operational messaging

Communication is mostly top-down and one-way

No consistent strategy for information sharing

Poor mutual understanding of roles and responsibilities

Misalignment between intentions and delivery

Fragmentation between operational and leadership levels

Meetings lack purpose, clarity, and outcomes

Too many meetings, often duplicative and unfocused

Poor planning, preparation, and follow-through

Culture of blame dominates discussions

Meetings perceived as performative, not productive

Siloed teams and lack of cross-functional collaboration

Blame and defensiveness are default modes

Low morale due to overwork and poor recognition

Toxic behaviours go unaddressed

Staff feel unsupported and isolated

Processes are inadequate, inconsistent, or outdated

Staff do not follow processes; leadership doesn’t enforce them

Culture of “doing it my way” over standardisation

Crisis management replaces structured planning

New IT systems are poorly implemented and not user-friendly

IT systems are cumbersome, slow, and confusing

Lack of training and user guidance

Systems not fit for operational needs

Poor integration across platforms

Systems contribute to inefficiencies and contract risk

Assurance processes seen as tick-box exercises

Lack of feedback or corrective actions

Inconsistent auditing and follow-up

Contractual compliance over meaningful quality

Low confidence in accuracy of assurance outcomes

KPIs viewed as manipulated or irrelevant

Disconnect between targets and actual delivery

Performance reporting lacks transparency

No learning or improvement from metrics

Staff don’t believe metrics reflect real work

Staff unaware of or disconnected from mission statements

Statements perceived as corporate lip service

No shared objectives across organisations

Disconnect between values and leadership behaviour

Objectives don’t guide day-to-day decision-making

“Cost first” mentality undermines quality and value

Short-term fixes trump long-term sustainability

No shared understanding of value between parties

Frontline needs ignored in strategic decisions

Value perceived through profit, not impact

Teams have fundamentally conflicting goals

Lack of aligned purpose or mutual commitment

Cultural differences erode trust

Centralised decisions override local needs

Adversarial relationship dominates interactions

Mutual distrust and blame are entrenched

“Them and us” culture undermines collaboration

Joint ownership of issues is rare

Leadership doesn’t model unity

Contractual policing overrides partnership

Collaboration is inconsistent and person-dependent

Power imbalance prevents fair engagement

Personality clashes hinder teamwork

Local relationships stronger than systemic ones

No shared identity or ethos

Senior leaders are remote and disconnected

Engagement happens too late or superficially

Overburdened leaders struggle to prioritise people

Site-level leadership often more effective

Need for consistent presence and clarity

Change is top-down and reactive

Perceived as “only financially motivated”

Change fatigue widespread among staff

Local teams not empowered to adapt

Poor rollout of IT systems hinders progress

Blame culture dominates problem-solving

Problems are ignored or delayed

Little cross-communication on issues

Third parties brought in after delays

Solutions pursued only after cost implications considered

🚀 Get Started: Test Your Alignment with this Free Diagnostic

Quickly gauge your alignment

The Supply Chain Alignment Diagnostic is a crucial step on the journey:

  • Check out the diagnostic for yourself – experience it and capture your own perspective
  • Then invite your team – Invite up to 6 other people
  • Gather and capture perspectives – Engage people by evaluating some key things that matter
  • Get your custom report – Responses are anonymized and compiled into an accessible report
  • See your alignment (and misalignment) – Identify group agreement, divergence, and blind spots
  • Discover your Strengths & Weaknesses – Share best practice and get support where needed
  • Get guidance on using this insight – Improve collaboration and decision-making

This powerful, easy-to-use diagnostic isn’t a survey — it’s a clear, structured assessment to quickly pinpoint your alignment and performance strengths, areas for improvement, and which actions will deliver the greatest impact.

🚀 Get Started: Test Your Alignment with this Free Diagnostic

Diagnose Issues

spot potential issues before they turn in to serious problems

Gauge Alignment

identify where there is and isn’t convergence of opinion

Share Strengths

capture and share best practice to improve outcomes and motivation

Diagnostics Trusted by Supply Chain Leaders

“It helped us prioritize where to take action by identifying elements of partnering best practices that need the most attention”
Leona Kral
Alliance Manager, Mobile Computing Partnerships
Verizon
“It served as a valuable catalyst for alliance management groups across AstraZeneca and Medimmune to convene and discuss how we partner more broadly across the enterprise.”
Steve Twait
VP Alliance & Integration Management
AstraZeneca
“To understand reality, we needed to understand the perceptions first. It allowed us to capture perceptions efficiently so we could begin to investigate reality.”
Bernie Hannon
Senior Director, Strategic Alliances
Citrix

Start Your Free Alignment Diagnostic Now

🎯 See how aligned your team is

📅 Offer available until April 30, 2025

👥 Identify areas of agreement

🚀 Start Your Free Diagnostic

Use the Access Code you’ve been provided

⚠ Offer expires soon. Secure your assessment today!

Frequently Asked Questions

Alignment is a necessary foundation for success.

But it is very difficult to achieve and very difficult to know how far away you are from achieving it.

The Supply Chain Alignment Diagnostic will give you an idea of where things really are, and establish a benchmark which you can return to later, to track change and evaluate the effectiveness of actions taken.

If everything is looking good, and if everyone agrees, then the diagnostic will substantiate this.

More likely, though, you’ll uncover areas of opportunity, where the diagnostic and report will:

  • Provide a constructive outlet to surface concerns regarding some key things that matter, and prepare to reorient around solutions
  • Encourage and support individuals that want to take a lead in understanding and making progress in developing alliancing capability
  • Clarify where to focus, which may include discussing and resolving different perspectives

True alignment doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when teams see their differences, discuss them openly, and take action together.

Absolutely not.

We understand that people often have “survey fatigue”, but beyond some superficial similarities, the purpose, nature and outcomes of a diagnostic are entirely different to a survey:

The Supply Chain Alignment Diagnostic is a structured diagnostic tool for synthesizing, comparing and highlighting differences in perspectives.

It will not only reveal misalignments you wouldn’t otherwise see, but it will clarify them through the specific detail of the focused areas you will be evaluating (Value Codes in the table above).

You’ll be asked to set a password to keep your responses secure (nothing will be shared with any third party).

After you’ve submitted your response, you can invite up to 6 other people to share their perspective.

Most participants complete it in under 30 minutes, and immediately after submitting their response, they each receive a personalized report that presents back and highlights aspects of what they have said. 

After you’ve submitted your own response, we’ll give you the option to invite up to 6 other members of your team.

When all participants have submitted responses, a more detailed report is generated that synthesizes and analyzes all the data to identify:

  • Overall trends.
  • Specific areas that seem agreed to be of concern (and areas that seem to be going well).
  • Areas with a diverse spread of opinion, suggesting division or perception gaps to resolve.
  • Patterns amongst what has been surfaced.
  • Frequent terms used, which can be the beginnings of a shared language.
  • Recommended next steps.

Absolutely. Your responses are 100% confidential, and results, not attributed to a named person, are only shared within your participating team.