When potential business partners exploring a relationship conclude one or both of them are not a “good fit”, you have a choice. Assuming this has been a genuine and honest attempt with real business on the table, you can

1. Cut off the dialogue with no further contact
2. Give permission to stay in touch on a pre-agreed or as appropriate basis
3. Do the latter and offer to pass on “no obligation” referrals (names, ideas or insights of mutual interest).

You have options.

You are leaving but you do not have to end your relationship or the future value that might arise for each other.

This sounds a childish question: are you playing the short or long game with your potential partners? If so, why? Does that make sense for your business growth, today and in future?

A client asks your help to set up an in-person international meeting with potential partners, who have expressly stated that their preference to meet in an in-person environment to discuss sensitive matters. You invest considerable time setting that up. Through their own lack of organisation the client asks you to cancel the meeting with 36 hours notice and offer a virtual call instead (less perceived priority). If you don’t push back (ask the client to propose alternatives that are obviously in the partners’ self-interests to accept) and/or ask the client to directly explain their priorities and potential “next steps” with potential partners, you are not acting like peers. You are acting as “room service”. The Client is not always right and they need to be made aware of it.

Collaborations work or fail on the “battle field”. The same is true in business or investments, executive or investor agreement summarised in a contract, is only a success where all parties on the operational front-line maintain a peer-level trusting relationship, and possess the real-world skills and volition to work together in support of those mutually-agreed outcomes. Hence accountability for success must lie at all levels in an organisation, and the rewards and recognition aligned accordingly, before all parties commence.

At different points in our lives we get asked to take on leadership roles with smaller or larger, local or national charitable, volunteer and other community not-for-profit organisations. They can be fun and wonderful uses of time but they can also very quickly become miserable experiences.

The largest cause of that misery, is yourself when you believe you are somehow the one, who has to take on the burden of solving other people’s problems. The uncomfortable truth is those individuals are responsible for solving their own problems. Let them deal with it but by all means give them support.

Memo to self:

• Don’t believe it is your internal problem or personal challenge to do so.
• Don’t cede power, control and influence to others, who try to push you into their “misery black hole”.
• Don’t try to please everybody. It’s okay if some people are unhappy.
• Don’t compromise your standards.
• Don’t work with organisations, who insist that “goodwill” (people’s feelings) rather than a “for-profit mentality” is the primary driver to running a successful non-profit organisation, large or small. The former is too unsustainable and too unpredictable, even more so where you have volatile key people, to build a vibrant charity, voluntary group or community around. You cannot be over-reliant on the kindness of one or two volunteers or strangers.

PGA golfer Bob MacIntyre has a huge career breakthrough moment on Sunday with his dad Dougie, a last minute call up as an emergency caddie, winning the Canadian Open. In that moment Netflix’s “Full Swing” series had a perfect episode for the next season.

Consider this, if MacIntyre blows the five shot final round lead (he won by by one stroke), a golfer who has been through endless caddies in his first season based on the US tour, does he blame his dad and how does that affect their relationship?

My point is when you bring family and friends into your business, investment or sporting life in a formal sense, you have to be able to live with both what happens, and more importantly, what you do about it. That includes firing each other and the trail of emotional stress.

My business policy has not been to accept family and friends, as direct clients or co-investors in my business or investments. Some might have fewer options, and accept them as grown up adults making their own informed decisions. My advice is to tread very cautiously and to have a plan for

1. the logical relationship needs (goals to be met, return on time and money invested, progress/success metrics)

2. the emotional relationship needs (success/failure, fear/overconfidence, managing celebration/conflict, doubling down/termination etc)

3. preventative actions (regular in-person heart to heart conversations at ideal time, ideal place under ideal conditions) and

4. contingent actions (a support system with a qualified non-family member as an independent and honest counselor)

To be consistent and stick with the ground rules you both agree upon at the outset and put in place. An acceptance that any “partnership” will have a natural disengagement and require managing carefully in an orderly manner.

You might get lucky like the MacIntyre family. Arguably winning and celebrating with family and friends is no more satisfying an experience but so is losing and managing the “fall out” with family and friends arguably the most dispiriting experience. In any business, sporting or investing endeavour the odds are you are likely to lose more often than you win together, you just hope the size and scale of the “wins” outweighs the size and scale of the “losses” over time. Tread carefully, act wisely.

Some people see the termination of a discussion with a potential business partner as primarily a sign of their self-worth. They allow their ego to be bruised, and take being turned down very personally. Furthermore, they view further contact with a high degree of scepticism (why should I bother?) or are wary being perceived as boastful when updating them about an opportunity they missed out on.

Others maintain an equilibrium, parking their ego, and simply move onto the next conversation. Knowing that rejection is rarely final and unless they have been talking to a proven idiot, both parties genuinely wanted to see this succeed but they have come to a rational decision, at that specific point in time, and under the prevailing knowledge and conditions. It is rational to stay in touch, at an appropriate juncture thereafter, to explore future opportunities, and update each other on your future success, and interests.

Why should I care about the problem you need resolving, the decision that needs taking, the plan that needs creating or the smarter approach that needs developing? Tell me.

Most people start their reasoning with the logic (greater productivity, faster growth, higher profits, stronger repute). I don’t need to hear your logic but I do need to emotionally understand why I should act now.

“It went great, she is a dreadfully nice person and agreed to discuss with her colleagues and get back to me”, is a regular refrain I hear from my clients after first meetings with a potential partner. Great but what about their obvious self-interests, your ability to put something compelling in front of them that leads to your desired result, and their competing priorities?

Too often partners seeking prospective partners see their attendance at the meeting and they being liked as the result when it is really a “means” to an “end”.

If you both are not clear what that “end” obviously looks like (clear personal and business outcomes) for the other party, how can you put something compelling in front of them and why would they meet again? How do you know their internal investigation will lead to your desired result? How can you know with certainty that there isn’t something else going on right now that may stall or de-rail your proposed work together?

Meetings are about results, not attendance. Above all they are about asking the right questions that maximises your control of the discussion and the relationship that may follow on.

I hear a number of clients talking about the twists and turns of forming collaborations with large financial institutions and insurance companies. How they entered via a warm referral from a trading partner to an upper- middle level manager. How they “loved” their product or service. How they spent months going through the organisation’s assessment and development process, responding to the manager’s need to being seen to have run a robust due diligence process. How they received neither a definitive “yes” or “no” but further offers to join a pilot or “innovation sprint”, which really was an exercise for the manager to impress his or her direct reports.

All along they have yet to, or have fleetingly met their “economic partner”, the individual(s) inside the larger organisation, who control the P&L, can approve the alliance without anyone else’s authority and will claim credit for the success. They have yet to have a “value-orientated conversation” with them (personal and business objectives, agreed metrics, impact on the business). Rather they insist on preparing a pitch document, sending detailed explanations of costs and fighting every objection thrown at them.

Here is the fast-track: don’t engage with non-economic partners other than with the express intention to be introduced and meet your economic partner(s).

Don’t be surprised that those with the subsidiary CEO or MD title and in the midst of restructurings, reveal themselves NOT to be your economic partner alone, and/or there are other economic partners to meet.

They have policies, and so should you.

If you are delegated for due diligence purposes to subordinates, NEVER lose control or contact with your economic partner. Point out ahead of time that they will very often receive feedback (perceived, actual and catastrophic risks), which will be presented to protect the self-interests of those undertaking the due diligence work , not the economic partner. Why? The rewards and recognition system is formulated to produce that behaviour. Agree a time to triage those issues, into a common sense, and easy to manage evaluation.

Collaboration discussions are fundamentally about the economic partner(s) seeing it is obviously in his or her self-interest to work with you now. Nothing more.

To get there requires maintaining careful and prudent control of the conversation. Not fearing offending subordinates, not wasting time, and not being too flexible. For even highly experienced former executives or advisory board members brought in to lend credibility and coach enthusiastic entrepreneurs, to use their contacts and to work their magic, routinely veer off course. Their attitude and behaviour shaped by their past beliefs, and often an amiable disposition seeking to avoid confrontation with former colleagues and to be admired.