The power of partnership and its potential to foster business growth cannot be belittled at all. I have heard and seen how companies with great growth potentials have remained small because they refused to embrace synergy to partnerships. I have also seen and read of how the large conglomerates and global multinationals of today have grown to become so through critical alliances, mergers and acquisitions. Large companies with turnovers in billions of dollars like Walmart, Walt Disney, Coca Cola, Google, Procter and Gamble, General Electric, McKinsey and Company, to mention a few, have secrets in useful partnership, calculated acquisitions and positive buy-overs.
My knowledge of these things drove me to develop a resolution never to run a sole proprietorship; to value partnership and maximise the results of working joint ventures. Deciding to do this wasn’t my mistake (as a matter of fact, partnerships have brought and still are bringing me amazing development and profits). My mistake was going into partnership without understanding the rules, the do’s and don’ts of this productive but delicate nature of business. It will not be an overstatement if I say that no global growth can be achieved by an organisation that won’t sell equity. So if you dream of building a global brand, partnerships, alliances, these are things you cannot do without.
To continue my story, I put my money into a very lucrative agric venture, followed through the process but lost the harvest. Here are a few lessons I learnt from that experience.
(1) Understanding the technical capacity of your partner: In a manner of speaking, understand what your partners can do and what they cannot do. Find out if they can be trusted and delegated to certain jobs. This also entails you knowing how much their knowledge is, on the basis of partnership;
know their strength and limits on the same course.
(2) Make commitments based on findings: Avoid sentimental judgment if you want clarity. Also, do away with the mistake of trusting people based on their words and promises. Make your research on your intended partner(s), conclude on the result you come out with and afterwards evaluate your findings to know where sentiments have clouded your judgment.
(3) Settle all legal requirements: As the popular saying goes, what is worth doing at all is worth doing well. Make appointment with your lawyer to make all activities in the course backed up legally to avoid ambiguity and to allow for clarifications.
(4) Do not enter into partnership with someone you cannot send to jail: This literally means you should not pull someone or accept someone to be your partner if you cannot let yourself stand in a position to displease such persons. These people could be bosom friends, parents or siblings, because you might find it hard to punish them for their mistakes without some emotional attachment.
(5) Be clear about your profit ratio: In partnerships, seriousness and
official protocol cannot be overrated or else the whole course will collapse in no time. Therefore, let everyone of your partner know their share on every profit made from the course.
(6) Honesty: For me, honesty is compelled out of people by keeping your eyes on everything going in and coming out of the course, making dishonesty hard for your partners to come by. Honesty is not given, it is expected and it is a kind of belief. But conviction goes a long way to give satisfaction on your partner’s activities or exercise on their given course.
(7) State their roles and your roles: To achieve a desired goal on a course, each and every partner has to know their roles and your roles on the given course as an obligation to each person on the course, so as to make the best out of every resources, be it manpower or machine, for the achievement of the desired goals based on visions and mission.
(8) Behind legal advisors, find out those your partners respect and honour: As they say, everyone is answerable to someone somewhere somehow and this should be applied in time of trouble, especially when you need someone who can help you
talk your partner into or out of certain things that can affect the smooth sail of the course.
(9) My experience when I did not take these nine points into cognisance: In my experience of losing N11 million last year, I have come to realise that the only reason I lost so much, not just money but also trust, was sentimental judgment. I thought I knew people based on what they said and the promises they made to the course. This cost me a lot of benefits and profit last year. I have learnt from my mistake and I urge you to ‘look before you leap’, because not all that glitters is gold.
The mistakes in our lives are opportunities for critical advancement, if we bring out lessons from them. Today, I still run other businesses and share business growth truths through seminars, personal coaching platforms and conferences. My goal is to help build credible, intelligent individuals who can help Africa secure its place under the sun by building sustainable, socially-responsible business empires that will become global brands.
OLUSOLA AMUSAN
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