Learning To Avoid Bad Business Relationships
Business are built on relationships. Which means that as with personal relationships, we can and will make mistakes. Every marriage starts out with the best intentions, but 30% (at least) end in divorce. Every CEO is hired with optimism (and great investment.) But a significant percentage will end in forced turnovers, most of these due to ethical problems. Failed relationships in business have high costs, both financial and emotional –expensive golden parachutes, failed hires who waste costly training, partnerships and investments that lead to misery and conflict, investments that make you wish you had put your money anywhere else, buyouts that lead to the destruction of a business you’ve nurtured over decades. The owner of a branding firm, listening to a talk on how to get the ideal client, asked, in the Q &A, “Ok, but what about nightmare clients?” A venture capitalist told me her firm’s biggest problem is finding out—too late—that the founders of the firms they’ve inv...