Five Questions to Ask Your Business Partner
Photo by Kathleen Tyler Conklin
Being in business with someone is a big commitment. This is true whether you’re in business with your spouse, a family member, a friend or a professional colleague. When you decide to go in on a venture with another person, it’s important to make sure you do ongoing checks to ensure you’re both still pushing forwards in the same direction.
I call these ongoing checks partner audits. These are serious conversations that are best done at regular intervals. Many of the sets of business partners I’ve worked with have found that it works well to formalise these checks to distinguish them from their other everyday conversations. This works particularly well for business partners who are particularly close in other spheres of life such as spouses, siblings or best friends.
Do you do a regular partner audit in your business? If not, I would definitely recommend it as something to think about. Here are five questions you may want to ask your business partner.
One: Are we still moving in the same direction?
Sometimes an unprofitable period can be explained by business partners who didn’t know they were actually working towards different goals. The best progress happens when you work together!
Two: Have your priorities shifted?
This relates to both your business partner’s priorities within the business and out of it. Depending on your relationship with your business partner, you may not know about any personal challenges they’re currently facing. Concerns at home or with their health could take their focus away from the business, so it can be really helpful to ask this question regularly.
Three: Do we still want the same things from the business?
Just because you wanted the same things when you started out doesn’t mean you will further down the line. Changing personal commitments might mean that the ideal work/life balance when you started out doesn’t work for you anymore. Equally, you may find that interests and passions shift over time and that one of you now wants to work towards slightly different goals.
Four: Is there anything that isn’t working for you at the moment?
Have you ever had a small niggling issue with someone you work closely with that has grown into a much bigger problem over time? Asking this question regularly can help you both to address those small niggles before they start to cause real resentment.
Five: Are you satisfied with where we are?
Dissatisfaction can be a dangerous thing, especially when it isn’t addressed. If your business partner isn’t feeling good about where you are in your business right now, you’ll want to know about it. There may be something you can do to address that dissatisfaction… or they may find that just saying it out loud makes them feel more in control.
Some business partners are great at communicating, even when it comes to big questions like these. Others find probing questions more difficult to manage, especially when they suspect they may not get the answer they were hoping for.
There’s often no correlation between how close business partners are and how good they are at managing a partners audit. In fact, I’ve worked with many sets of business partners who double up as married couples and still find it tricky to start these conversations!
If you and your business partner fall into this category, please don’t use that as an excuse for skipping important conversations altogether. Big picture communication is really important when it comes to growing your business and preparing for the future. Instead of avoiding the issue, why not bring in a facilitator? An impartial third party could help to facilitate productive partner audits that really have an impact.
Need advice on where to start or looking for someone you can trust to be that third party facilitator? I’d love to help. Why not get in touch?
Trackback from your site.