On losing partners

May 29, 2009 in lessons learned
Tags: Chef, operations

The Devotional Chef lost a partner from the company this week. As is usually the case when a partner walks away from a start-up, the following dynamics are involved:

• Misunderstanding. This particular guy understood that the Chef had always intended to open up a soup kitchen in New Orleans with proceeds from the company. From sales of Devotional Chef products, 10% was always to be set aside for development of this soup kitchen; a potential site had also been located. The ex-partner had been touched by this planned outreach to the poor, but felt that this was not emphasized enough in the Chef’s business plan or any other communications.
• Morality. The Chef, being a preacher, values “integrity” over almost anything else. He felt that the ex-partner had made promises to the team – and make no mistake about it, this guy had made an important contribution to the company before deciding to walk – but the promises had not been fulfilled. Predictions were made, mistakes made in the predictions, milestones kept getting moved to the right. The Chef treated this as an integrity issue; the ex-partner, feeling himself a man of integrity, took offense and threw it right back; and it spun nearly out of control.
• Money. It’s always about money in the end. Devotional Chef Enterprises has accomplished with no money at all what many start-ups cannot do with their own building, a foosball table and a fridge full of beer. But the fact is that the Chef has no working capital, that things must happen to make the money appear, and that making those things happen with no pay and no guarantee of a happy outcome is difficult even for the strongest and most well-off among us. This guy says he needs to work on his own business, and he feels there’s nothing happening with the rest of the team.

The Chef, being a man of the cloth and dealing with the emotions of others daily, is hurt by this. My feeling is, better to break it off now and not grow an unhealthy dependency or negative emotions. And as for what I’ve learned:

• Communications. Everybody on a working team must always know what’s going on. This has been a bit of a problem for the Chef, as he is a people-person and an orator, not a writer, not a computer geek. I AM a writer and a computer geek, but I’m located a thousand miles away. So I told him this:
  • Open up a Notepad window on the Desktop every morning.
  • Whenever there’s a meeting or a phone call, write two sentences in that window: one to say who it was with and what it was about; the other to say the outcome.
  • At the end of the day, ship the contents of that window to me. LOL

  Then nobody can say there’s nothing going on. I can tell you the Chef has stuff going on every day. It just isn’t all in writing. Yet.

• Counsel. Before you add a partner, be sure to always do the due diligence. Check the guy (or gal) out, and repeatedly. Make sure all existing partners are in on it. Don’t offer an equity stake to anyone who isn’t willing and ready to count the cost. Then once the partnership is made, check with that partner regularly to make sure the relationship is stable.
• Consensus. Make no decisions of substance without everyone on the team having their say. Make sure they know what the decision is about; what consequences there may be; what’s expected from everyone.

I knew a guy when I was working for GreyPilgrim Inc., a partner, who lost his temper at the rest of the team, over an issue just like this one, and he sabotaged a working robotic component. Something that took hours to build. And after separation he threatened to undercut all the company’s relationships with stakeholders. Ai, ya! What a nightmare! Thank GTFW it didn’t happen here. I pray it never happens to you.