Husband and Wife Business Partner Challenges
I recently started working with a husband and wife partnership running a company of 40 employees and $20M in revenue. They came to me because they seemed to butt heads whenever they had a decision to make. Each had strong feelings about how things should be done and frequently found it difficult to reach an agreement. Fortunately they both were eager to find a resolution to their communication issues, which they had not been able to resolve on their own.
In addition to finding out where they were together and where they were apart, I learned each of their strengths. I asked if there was a delineation of duties, with each having responsibility for specific areas. While it seems they knew their areas of strength they did not have anything like a table of organization.
So their first assignment was to agree that each would be the final decision-maker for specific areas. The husband took web site development and marketing; the wife took operations and product management. For projects they agreed that the individual responsible for the department bearing the bulk of the work would oversee the project from beginning to end and would assign tasks to the other departments if needed.
They also agreed that before major decisions were made in their areas they would run the details and facts by the other partner. If the other partner had issues or concerns they would take 24 – 48 hours to consider everything before making a final decision.
This change meant they would need to communicate the new structure to their department heads, which is on the agenda for next time.
They have used the new system for 2 weeks and things seem to have gone smoothly so far. We’ll see what comes up as new projects are started and the staff adjust to a clearer delineation of roles and responsibilities.
