Finding the right business partner (6)

By Amechi Chukwujama - updated: Thursday 28-08-2008

What is a partnership? A partnership, like any relationship, is an agreement between two or more people with defined benefits and responsibilities.

More on Common Problems with Partnerships
You ask, if the other individuals you’re entering into partnership with are family members and close friends, is it necessary to go into all these written formalities? Yes. If you love your family members and close friends, it’s better that you write everything down so that the stresses of business do not get in the way of your long-held relationship.

The second common problem with partnerships is ineffective or absence of communication. This is one of the biggest challenges of all relationships. Every member of a partnership should strive to improve on the timeliness and effectiveness of their communication, and it’s necessary that the other parties be held in esteem.

Why partnerships fail
The problems in most partnerships started at the very beginning. At the beginning of their relationship, some participators try hard not to reach an open-defined agreement with clearly stated benefits and roles. Each person has his/her own personal agenda and merely wants to use the other person to reach this end. This personal agenda is disguised and hidden carefully and a different picture is presented to the other party and the public.

Even when an agreement is reached, a partner will work hard to break it because his/her personal agenda is different. A participant might merely want to use the energies of other members to get the project off the ground, and then start a quarrel to turn the partnership into a sole proprietorship. This could even happen when there’re signed agreements especially if one of the parties was the sole financier who provided such assets as office accommodation and vehicles.

The energy that’ll carry a partnership from beginning to the end is created at the beginning of it. There is a hand behind every human affair, the Hand of God (the Holy Spirit), and It mops up just enough energy to carry an activity from the beginning to the end. Two people might come together as business partners and one of them might say, “I want to partner with him because his brother is the Group Managing Director of NNPC.” The other might say, “I love to have him as my partner because he has deep pockets.”

What does Divine Spirit do? Working with the Law of Economy, It mocks up just enough energy to take this partnership as far as the parties want it - which in this case is as long as the man’s brother remains the MD of NNPC and the other man’s pockets remain full. When this energy has been expended, the one would start complaining about the other and the other will have his complaints too. Quarrels start. Outsiders that were not there when the participators chose this outcome would be invited to intervene in something they didn’t know anything about.

It doesn’t mean this partnership couldn’t be salvaged. But the participators have to sit down and consciously create a new cycle. They have to tell themselves the truth. They have to review their journey so far, identify lessons learnt, and then define where they want to go and how to get there.

Maintaining Your Partnership
In most partnerships, the ratio of expectation to responsibility seems to decrease with time. At the outset, people enter business relationships with high enthusiasm, a large dose of interest and optimism. With time, they tend to lose sight of their dream. They only look with heavy heart at the responsibilities they have to discharge to the other person (s), undervaluing or even taking for granted the service rendered by their partners. So, they start complaining.

If only participators in a partnership can maintain their original sense of adventure and optimism, more partnerships could be salvaged.

More next week.