Going into partnership in business is about far more than deciding to start a company with a friend over coffee. Usually the partners one chooses are friends and there are far more factors in play than simply who gets what share of the business. Thinking about factors which may seem trivial at the beginning will do more than save hassle in the long run, it will make the difference between a successful partnership and one which ends prematurely losing you more than money. I am going to look at this topic over three headings, which will usually be seen as the outline benefits of partnership.
Resource
The ability of combining resources is one of the main attractions of partnership but I also find that it is one of the most misguided. partners are under the impression that they can only achieve their idea if they combine their resources. I would say that in the majority of cases the individual can achieve the same level of resources but it requires a higher level of risk and commitment. It’s therefore letter to look at this from the point of view of risk or even fear. By having someone else on board we have their extra resources, which help, but also we have someone to share the fear of failure with. I’ve always had a very strict view on failure: I truly believe it’s a good thing. I think an entrepreneur learns so much by falling flat on their face and really think that everyone should go through it. It’s the ability to get up again and try a different variant, which makes us successful entrepreneurs, and going into partnership just because you are afraid to fail is a terrible approach because mentally you are allowing that fear to drive you.
Skills
The reason I go into partnership is due to skills, or more to the point, the lack of skills. The element of myself I value most in business is knowing myself, knowing what I am good at but also admitting when I am not capable of doing something. When I have a concept in my mind I plot out all of its necessary elements and I can very quickly tell which parts are beyond my knowledge in that area. It is very easy to think one can just take everything on and learn as it sets a shaky foundation, which is difficult to fix later on. In a ‘school yard style’ my main business partner, with whom I’m involved in a lot of projects, is also my best friend, Damien Pollard. We both have individual interests but come together to develop mutual projects. Without any formal planning we have developed a way of working together, which works very well for us but would not agree with every partnership. The question here is about authority and decision-making. Often when people go into business they decide on their individual share of the business, split their responsibilities then reconvene to make the decisions. This, to me at least, seems like a huge waste of time. If you have brought on a partner because they have a particular skill you lack and have assigned elements of the business to each other, it would seem to make sense to leave his idea of corporate democracy at the door and let the partner with the particular skill deal with that element of the business without input from the other aside from ensuring both are following the same goals. This links into another perceived benefit of partnership, which is the increased leadership time. If you take the approach of double-checking every decision one partner makes it greatly reduces this time benefit. I think it comes down to trust. How much trust do you have in the person you want to go into partnership with? It might take time to decide but I suggest you take an adaptive approach to it and re-evaluate the structure of decision making within an undertaking as the trust grows because it can bring many benefits to the way the company is run. |
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