Decision-making with a business partner
Hopscotch has no Managing Director. Paul and I are both in charge, each with an equal share in the company. We make all important managerial decisions together.
I’ve read that this is a bad idea, that the buck should stop with a single person. But it has been working for us so far, so I thought I’d briefly describe what our decision-making looks like.
To start with, I should point out that Paul and I are similar in certain important ways. We are sensible, we listen, and we are prepared to argue for our conclusions. If you or your business partner don’t share these characteristics, your attempt at joint management may be rockier than ours.
Most decisions aren’t important enough for us to discuss. If something needs doing in an area for which one of us is primarily responsible, that has no important implications for the rest of the business, that person will just do it, and tell the other later. This works because we trust each other to recognise the things that need discussing, and to make reasonable choices about the things that don’t.
When one of us wants to discuss a potential decision, that person will often already have a tentative path in mind. Then, the discussion will center on presenting and dissecting the costs and benefits of that path. If we don’t have enough information to determine the costs or benefits with reasonable accuracy, we’ll go away and look for it. Evidence is the lifeblood of these talks.
In any case, even the best information is often not enough to be sure that a business decision is right. We often need to guess at how, for example, employees and contractors will respond to certain incentives or disincentives, whether customers will value certain features, or how competitors will behave. We may also need to guess at what the world will look like in the future. Even if we had complete information about the past, we might still disagree about some of these things. In that case, we’d argue about the most reasonable path.
I’m using “argue” here in the Aristotelian, not the reality TV, sense. The point is to understand exactly where we disagree, why, and what as-yet-unavailable information might lead us to change our minds. It isn’t to pontificate, belittle, insult, obfuscate, or evade.
In these arguments, neither of us can overrule the other. Nobody can throw a tantrum and have his way by force. We must explain our thinking. We have to answer objections or explain why, even if valid, they don’t matter. If alternative pathways are offered, we entertain them in good faith.
On the rare occasion that we end up at an impasse after that, our decision-making tends to conform to a simple, unstated calculus. If one of us is strongly in favour and the other is, at worst, weakly opposed, we’ll proceed with the idea. If I’m the one in opposition, I usually think there’s something obvious that I’m missing, and that I’ll probably come around. But strong opposition by either of us is always effectively a veto. If it’s my idea being resisted, I treat that as sufficient evidence that, at the very least, I ought to think about it some more.
This process isn’t necessarily smooth. There is always room to mistake criticism for attack, and we can both get a little testy sometimes. Anyone can fall in love with their own ideas. Even between the best of friends, arguments can become heated, and stubbornness and ego may obtrude. The need to “win” can get in the way.
Argument is exhausting, but necessary. Sometimes I avoid it in the interest of peace, at work and beyond, but I try not to when something important is at stake. The only way that I know to test ideas for fitness is to subject them to attack. Only those that emerge from battle are worth consideration, and in my experience, they tend to be the better for it.
Anyway, we will see how this style of management withstands the passage of time and the pressures of scale. It may not. But for now, I’m happy with the results.
