Team sports prepare kids for the entrepreneurial business model. Girls, however, often play closely with one or two friends. What a great preparation for the business association! So it’s fitting that as women continue to start businesses in record numbers, many find partnership to be a comfortable format. In fact, trade associations work for women who come from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, including those who are tired of hitting the corporate glass ceiling, homemakers, and women who want to turn their passions and social connections into business ideas.
The association provides a wide variety of benefits, including a sense of connection and someone to cover when you go on vacation. On the other hand, many associations end in crisis and conflict. To avoid association failure, your association must possess the following seven components of a positive association.
Shared values. Partners need a sense of shared standards regarding what is desirable, undesirable, good, and bad. These values will guide the actions, judgments and choices of the partners. Values, which often carry considerable emotion, can range from valuing family, prosperity, ambition, work ethic, or political persuasion. In addition to helping partners make consistent decisions, shared values serve to keep partners together.
Different skills and traits (complementary). Successful partners will possess different (complementary) skills and traits. The broader the range of skills of the partners, the clearer the division of their work (and power) can be. It can be easy to distinguish the marketing person from the technical person in a company, but other necessary variables are often not so easy to see. Michael Gerber’s classic book “The E-Myth” explains that a business owner must play three roles: Entrepreneur: the creative visionary; Manager, the manager who brings planning, order, and predictability; and technician – the craftsman. Associations have a clear advantage in the fact that two or more people involved are available to play the three necessary roles.
Sense of fairness. Equity occurs when the rewards of a relationship are proportional to what each party perceives as their contribution. Strangers and casual acquaintances maintain fairness by keeping track of the benefits they exchange. However, in long-term and more committed relationships, it is not healthy to follow up. Instead, a sense of fairness must be established. A perception of inequity (I give more than I receive) has a tremendous cost in a partnership.
Growing up together. From the moment we are born to the day we die, we are in a process of growth and change. Members and their associations are continually experiencing this process of change. However, we are often not aware of the changes we are experiencing. And sometimes change is seen as a threat to the status quo. Successful partners embrace change and growth, knowing that this attitude benefits both their individual and shared professional identities.
Proactive conflict management strategies. Competing and avoiding are not effective conflict management strategies for the association. Instead, successful partners will use proactive and strategic approaches to conflict management, such as adaptation, compromise, and collaboration to resolve their differences.
Shared vision. Partners need a shared vision or plan for the future. Vision is what determines and expresses where an organization wants to go and how it intends to get there. A shared vision allows partners to focus on their goals and the methods they will use to achieve those goals. When partners have different views, they become discouraged, overwhelmed, and disconnected. To effectively create and benefit from a shared vision, four tasks are needed: creating the initial vision, translating that vision into the necessary physical actions, articulating and selling the vision to others, and staying true to the essence of the vision. When reality changes plans
An exit strategy. A graceful exit has been said to be proof of a successful company. Without an exit strategy in place, partners may be faced with making crucial decisions at a time when they were less sensible. An exit strategy is a shared sense of when and how an alliance will end and one should be included as an end point in a business plan. However, while planning for the end can be a critical aspect of owning a business, it is also one of the most neglected. Exits are easy to avoid when the issue is not urgent and raising the issue can sour the deal or suggest a lack of confidence. Four questions need to be addressed when considering an exit plan: what events could trigger the end of the partnership; how the business will be valued in the end; what future ownership options are acceptable; and what post-alliance ties and restrictions, such as non-compete clauses, should be included.
When you enter into a strong partnership in these seven components, you have the potential to create synergies and reap some amazing benefits. True synergy arises when two (or more) people work together to create results that would not have been obtainable independently. In a synergistic association 2 + 2> 4 and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.