I like partnerships; I like the idea that 1 + 1 = 3. Where a couple of people help each other and leverage their strengths and cancel out each others’ weaknesses, you can really create something special.

Partnerships can often make projects more successful because there’s that accountability that “forces” us to finish what we’ve started, and there’s someone there to help us along when the path gets bumpy.

The longer you’re in business, the more partnerships you’ll be invited to participate in. At this point, I get an invitation to partner with someone about once every 3 months or so.

I’ve been in good partnerships. I’m in a couple right now. I’ve also been in bad partnerships. My very first partnership, many years ago now, turned out like this: My partner came up with the idea and pulled together the logistics. I took his idea and logistics and created the product. Without warning, my partner sold everything and I ended up losing thousands of dollars just because I was not part of the decision-making process. It was an expensive lesson for me to learn and it took me months to “come back” from that financial hit. I’ve learned a few other things along the way, from other partnerships that were good, bad, or somewhere in between.

• Spread the workload: Make sure that each party is participating in the work. I’ve seen partnerships where one partner does the work. All of the work. Now, that doesn’t mean that the workload must be 50/50 but it shouldn’t be 100/0!
• Spread the risk: In all projects there is some risk. There might be time risked on a project that goes nowhere. There might be money risked on infrastructure. There might be reputation risked. There might even be the risk of lost clients because you’re so focused on your partnership. Assess the risks early and find a way to spread them.
• Spread the reward: Make sure that each party enjoys a reward that is relative to the amount of work they perform and risk they take on. For example, perhaps you want to split your reward 50/50 if one party does almost all of the work while the other party takes on almost all of the risk.
• Define your project parameters early. Talk about how you measure success. (You don’t want to be stuck in a project where you measure success in one way while your partner measures success in a competing way).
• Discuss exit strategies: What happens if one partner needs to leave the partnership. There might be different reasons so you might need to draw up different contingencies.
• Hammer out the details! Disagreements rarely arise over big issues! They often arise over small issues (and then those small issues become big issues). This is an occasion when you do want to sweat the small stuff.
• Accept compromise: This was the hardest for me to learn! When I do a project, I like to work in a certain way and I like to complete the project in a certain way. But I’ve been in partnerships where the person’s workstyle was different and where they finished a project in a way that I would not. (In that partnership I had to remind myself that the project was still completed well, even if it wasn’t completed the way I would have done it).