Don’t Ignore This Key Component Of A Successful Partnership

One of the perks of working with a partner is that work gets divided based on each partner’s complementary strengths. It is great to be able to take advantage of someone else’s creativity, knowledge and skills. It’s often a relief to have someone else work in an area that you don’t enjoy, but too often partners take that to mean they can ignore the area the other is in charge of. It is vast a mistake to take such an attitude.

It is extremely important that all the partners keep abreast of all the areas that are not directly theirs, and this particularly means finance. All partners involved need to be “in the know” about the other areas of the business – including project statuses, milestones, key vendors and budgets.

Now, this has nothing to do with not trusting your partner’s expertise. Too often, I have seen business partners discover that they don’t know the first thing about the company’s marketing strategy or hiring processes, and it always happens when they are in a critical situation.

There is one area where it is absolutely critical that each partner be directly and thoroughly involved with. The finances. Cash flow affects everything. Decisions that will affect cash flow need to me made with direct input from other partners. It is a bad idea if only one partner is aware of what is happening in the books.

Admittedly, monitoring cash flow is not everyone’s favorite job, but to be a successful, profitable business, cash flow needs to be discussed and monitored on a regular basis, at the very least, quarterly.

Imagine that you believed everything in your business was great. You weren’t sure what was going on with the finances, or client relations, but that was okay, because you assumed everyone was doing their jobs. You hadn’t bothered with regular partner meetings because again, you thought everything was great. Then, you lose your biggest client. You are not sure what direction the company will take. None of the partners are sure of what any of the other partners were doing – or did not do – to get here.

This happened to a couple of partners who came to me for private coaching. If there had been weekly reports and scheduled, quarterly coming together with the pieces of a complex business, they would have seen it coming. In that case, they would have no doubt prevented this.

Don’t think of your partner’s skills as an excuse for you to not be involved. Share the information on a regular, scheduled basis (I suggest weekly). Discuss the implications. I guarantee you will have a much smoother running machine, more efficiency, time and certainly profits if you each pay attention to the areas that are not your direct responsibility to manage. All of the areas are pieces of puzzle that should be in kept in place.

Here are some l tools I suggest for you:

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More tools to come.... You have made a serious investment, both financially and emotionally to create this business. Do everything you can to make sure it succeeds.

Feel free to email your comments and questions. info@businesspartnershipsolutions.com