The Cost of a strained or dysfunctional Business Partnership
Oct 2010
What is a dysfunctional Business Partnership?
One where partners do not or cannot have the difficult conversation with each other.
One where trust has been eroded or may be missing altogether by now.
One that is about to break up – you conclude “It’s not worth the hassle”.
One where you feel you’re doing all the heavy lifting and your partner doesn’t.
One where your partner is constantly criticizing you (openly, or by implication).
One where your partner’s behavior is often annoying you.
One where your partner always knows better than you.
One where the feeling of sharing and caring is missing.
One where you are not both pulling on the same end of the rope.
The Cost:
You and/or your partner are no longer fully engaged in the business, the business languishes.
Great damage to the competitiveness of the business.
Sales/profits down. The potential of the business not being reached.
Your employees are not fully engaged. They suffer from lack of enthusiasm, split allegiances. Their energy is drained.
Your employees have divided into several camps, each supporting a different partner and ganging up on the other.
Quality of your product/service suffers. Your customer service suffers. Your customers feel the negative energy emanating from you the owners, and from your employees.
You don’t look forward coming to work anymore.
The business and the partnership are no longer fun.
You waste enormous amounts of energy competing with and fighting with your partner(s), energy that could be used so much better for the benefit of growing the business.
You feel like you’re walking on egg shells so as to not annoy your partner, or provoke another fight.
You waste energy big time worrying about the future of the business and your own future.
You go home at the end of the day depleted of energy, stressed, tired, bringing the negative energy home to spouse and kids.
Your friends notice your stress and low energy levels. You are no fun to be around.
You begin to doubt yourself, your ability to get along with other people, your ability to select a good partner, your capacity to be a good partner yourself.
You criticize yourself for ever having select such a ……. Partner.
Confusion, helplessness sets in.
You feel like throwing in the towel.
Divorce is imminent.
A great opportunity is lost.
The good news:
If you are aware of the status of your relationship and you truly desire to change it, YOU CAN!
Getting outside, impartial expertise to realistically and objectively assess the situation and then get you and the relationship with your partner(s) back on its feet is one of the preferred solutions.
We are ready to assist you with an objective assessment of your situation. Even if your partnership is not dysfunctional at this time, you could probably benefit from a good “maintenance check-up”.
