Building A Healthy Partnership, Part 1

This week I met with another self-employed tutor and discussed some exciting possibilities of teaming up. I also stumbled upon this article by Erik Barnlund of Mavidea:

Sometimes entrepreneurship can be a lonely road. The vision you have and the ideas you create make total sense to you. But sometimes they don’t quite connect with other people.

You’re on fire with possibilities. You tell yourself, “I want to do this.”

But some people you talk to seem to think you’re nuts! You hear, “That won’t work.” They shake their heads and say, “We don’t see it.”

So when you finally do find someone who gets it — and gets it enough that they want to help you make it happen — it can be really exciting.

Often, this is how partnerships begin in a startup business.

Healthy partnership vs. smart partnership

One of the most common mistakes that startup businesses make is to make a poor selection of partners.

The problem is, most businesses start with the goal of creating a smart partnership. The new founders try to select partners that cover every essential skill set needed to run the business.

Smart businesses make sense on paper. They are rooted in research, facts and the highest levels of intelligence and skills.

By comparison, healthy businesses focus on being clear and tackling difficult issues with confidence. They organize in a way that supports communication. This moves the organization forward faster.

Very little stands in the way of a healthy organization because they are more agile in tackling issues they encounter. And this is how, ultimately, healthy businesses beat out smart companies.

Healthy business vs. smart business

A healthy business is built on trust. By making trust the central factor, a healthy business avoids the problems that absence of trust can create, no matter how smart the business.

Smart partnerships might seem to make sense because of the shared risk — and because they divide up responsibility for critical tasks.

The excitement of shared interest fuels initial progress. But cracks often start to show when communication fails.

Smart partnerships often lack the ability to work productively through conflict. Eventually, focus on the collective vision is lost because frustrating interpersonal issues begin to trump the mission at hand.

In a healthy partnership, each partner shares a selfless desire to make the team successful. A healthy partnership faces issues and moves past them quickly. Trust is unwavering at the highest levels.

In a smart business, trust isn’t the focus. It’s all about numbers and details and less about making sure the organization itself is functional.

That’s why a smart partnership has a much greater risk of failing.