A gentleman named Craig called in very distressed that his business associates are having a meltdown. After 12 years of getting along in a successful business, they were shocked to lose their biggest customer. None of them saw it coming. Worse still, the four partners, usually friends, blame each other, get into screaming fights and behave in a way that until now was totally alien to this “ideal partnership”. He had heard that I rescued trading companies and implored me to rescue his.

I spent a day on site, interviewing each one separately, and in the afternoon I brought them together as a team. Each one shared with me and then with each other their complaints, concerns and resentments towards the other partners that they kept hidden all these years. There was a basic trust and respect between them, but the little hurts and annoyances over the years had festered. As a result, they gradually avoided regular meetings to discuss anything. Losing his biggest client was the last straw that made it impossible to remain silent.

The client had been forgotten without anyone noticing the signs that he was considering leaving. Who was responsible? No one thought it was himself and with great conviction he blamed others.

There are a number of advantages to having a partner in your business. One of them is that the work is divided according to the strengths of each partner. It’s great to be able to tap into someone else’s creativity, knowledge, and skills. It’s a relief to have someone else working in an area you don’t like, but too often partners feel they don’t have to know anything about the other areas, especially when they trust each other’s skills and work ethic. It is a great mistake to take such an attitude.

This is what Tom, Craig, Lenny and Ray (not their real names) had done. Each of them had their own area of ​​expertise and was responsible for managing it: finance and IT, marketing, inventory and fulfillment, and customer and employee relations. They had more than 40 employees divided among their departments.

All partners need to be “in the know” on all areas of the business, including project statuses, milestones, key vendors, team and budget coordination, etc. This has nothing to do with not trusting your partner’s experience. Too often, I’ve seen business partners find out that they know nothing about the company’s marketing strategy, hiring processes, and even cash flow because it’s another partner’s “responsibility.” They know when something catastrophic happens.

Not only is everyone responsible for knowing all areas of their business, but without coordination and discussion between departments, the business could not function optimally. And the bottom line, even with the big customer on board, is at least not as solid as it could be. All partners are responsible for knowing what is happening in all departments, actively evaluating, generating ideas and making decisions that affect the whole.

My rescue plan was successfully concluded with the reestablishment of regularly scheduled meetings where open communication would always prevail. Hassles, misunderstandings, and disagreements would be raised the moment they occur, avoiding the acrimony that leads to disastrous results.

For the business to thrive, each partner has committed to being responsible for the big picture as well as their particular area of ​​responsibility. Blaming others was no longer an acceptable part of their culture.