Creating New Value for Your Partnership

What if you thought of your partner’s complaints as opportunities to create new value for your partnership and your business? Recently, Sarah listened to her partner Sid complain to their administrator that the bi-weekly operations meetings had become boring, unproductive and a real pain! Scratching her head, Sarah called Sid into their open-space office and, without missing a beat, exclaimed, “Hey, Sid, if you have a problem with the operations meetings, why didn’t you tell me? It’s not like I’m exactly in love with them either – I just don’t get why you think the right way to fix it is by complaining to Dave? We should just let Dave know he has to fix the way we’re holding meetings and move on!” Sid shrugged his shoulders and let Sarah know that it wasn’t that big of a deal – and not to get all worked up about it. They parted that afternoon without talking about the subject further. As a matter of fact, they haven’t been back to that conversation yet – and 2 full weeks have gone by (and a bunch of those boring, unproductive and painful meetings)!

Sarah missed a stellar moment to clarify Sid’s concern and together take actions to deal with it – creating great value for their partnership as well as for their business. Sid complained directly about the costs of the current meeting protocol – boring (indicating participants weren’t energized or engaged), unproductive (little return on the time/energy employed) as well as a real pain (ouch!). If one of the chief operating officers of Sid and Sarah’s company feels that way – what’s the cost to the company in terms of energy, money, time and opportunity?
Sarah creates value for the partnership and for the business only if she speaks up and finds a way for her and Sid to take actions that make a better use of the company’s resources than the current meeting routine. Sure, Sid’s comments are judgments – which are subjective and emotional in nature, but they contain a greater truth – the fact that one of the partners is unsatisfied, not getting his expectations met, and disengaged at least a couple of hours biweekly, is a drain on the company and a stress on the partnership relationship – since neither of them moves towards action.

Maintain a high energy partnership by listening for what’s being said behind the complaints – and make value creation a regular practice. To find out more about how high energy contributes to the quality of your business partnership and to better results, take our Partnership Stress Test and compare your results to the best!