An alliance is a series of coordinated actions between two or more people in pursuit of a shared goal. An alliance could last for minutes or months and the goal could be massive or microscopic.

Specificity is essential to establish alignment at the start of an alliance: What is our goal? How will each participant contribute? How will we evaluate our progress?

Most things pursued solo are better pursued in an alliance. Alliances foster ideas and methods that someone acting alone may not have considered. One person’s skill is another person’s struggle, and alliances allow people to do what they do best instead of doing everything. Alliances can also help participants get better at something they’re bad at by paying attention to how another participant is doing it.

The effectiveness of an alliance ought to be evaluated by how each participant felt about the pursuit itself, not by whether the goal was met. It’s useful to have a conversation upon the completion of the alliance to give and receive feedback from everyone about how it went. If the goal wasn’t met but each person enjoyed and felt good about the alliance’s efforts, then they might also benefit from allying again in the future. Conversely, even if it a goal was met, if a participant feels bad about their participation, that could be a sign to avoid future alliances of that particular shape.

Today’s word, when combined with the (N / 2)th word in this post, forms an anagram of “spice eel pope”.