If you have a choleric temperament like me or you are the “never-say-die” type of business owner, then perhaps this experience will resonate with something you’ve done before or are still doing.
My corporate team and I were looking forward to a strategic collaboration I had brokered with the CEO of another company to enable both companies grab a huge chunk of our target markets. My initial meetings with this CEO were hugely successful and my progress report to my Board Chairman that month was filled with bold projections of the profits our company stood to gain with this impending collaboration. I was looking forward to the “impressive looks” on the faces of my Board when I presented to them the overwhelming profits we had made from this collaboration.
I prepared and emailed to my prospective partner, a draft MOU with the specific roles both companies would play and the timelines we would abide by. He promptly replied that he was game with the draft MOU, so I had a final copy made and we agreed on a meeting date to sign it.
However, my colleague CEO postponed the signing of the MOU on three consecutive occasions and on each instance, he sounded extremely apologetic explaining that he had to attend one important meeting or the other. By the fourth postponement, I was getting irritated, but he quickly called and proposed that in order not to fall far behind our scheduled timelines, my company could go ahead and implement our initial roles and his company would follow suit shortly after.
WARNING SIGN NO 1 – Senseless postponements? MOU still unsigned? Yet collaboration to take off regardless?!!!
I led my team to implement my company’s initial role with the commitment, precision and excellence which symbolized our corporate work ethics. Later, concerned feedback reaching me from my team indicated that our collaborating CEO and his team were shirking all their share of responsibilities and compromising the quality standards we had mutually agreed to abide by.
WARNING SIGN NO 2 – Conflicting corporate work ethics? How can successful results be achieved by teams with opposing work values?
I immediately called for separate meetings with the CEO and his team to register my displeasure at their unprofessional attitude to work and received prompt assurances of better performance in subsequent tasks. However, to my dismay, their dismal performance continued, regardless.
WARNING SIGN NO 3 – How can anyone expect an indifferent and unproductive CEO to lead his team into producing positive results?
I could no longer suppress this 3rd warning sign. The harsh truth it carried hit me like a bomb! I finally decided to call the CEO and cancelled our “assumed” collaboration. By then instead of my expected “success at all cost” I had wasted 6 months of my team’s precious time and efforts as well as my company’s hard earned financial resources. As to how my Board responded, well.. the least said about that, the better.
Now let’s interrogate this experience. Why did I, the CEO of my company, have to wait till the third warning sign to pull out of an obviously flawed collaboration? What kept me pushing on? An unwillingness to fail? A senseless determination to gain the applause of my Board at all cost? Inner pressure to excel at all times?
What do you think? You have also walked this crazy path before, haven’t you? What made you so defiant? I bet some CEOs reading this are right now in the process of ignoring some screaming warning signs! Take a reflective cue from my experience and back track while there is still time! A word to the wise……
Coming up next week: HOW DID I COME THROUGH THESE down moments AS Business Owner?
