Thinking · Global · 5 min read
Why partnerships fail before the contract is signed
By the time a partnership is visibly failing, the decision that caused it is eighteen months old.
By Mark Eve
Enthusiasm is not alignment
Partnership conversations begin with what the two businesses have in common — markets, values, ambition. That produces warmth and very little structure. The durable partnerships are built on asymmetry: each party has something the other cannot easily build.
If both sides can articulate what they would lose by walking away, the partnership has a foundation. If they can only articulate what they like about each other, it does not.
The questions nobody asks early
Four questions, asked before drafting, prevent most failures.
- What does the other party gain, in their own words, measured in their own numbers?
- Who inside their organisation is accountable, and what are they rewarded for?
- What happens to the relationship when the first year underperforms the plan?
- How does either party exit, and who keeps the customers?
Structure follows honesty
A contract can only record an agreement that already exists. When the commercial understanding is vague, legal drafting hides the vagueness rather than resolving it, and the ambiguity surfaces at the first disagreement.
The most useful hour in any partnership process is the one spent writing down, plainly, what each side expects to be true in three years.
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