April 25, 2009

A Good Friend Means A Good Business Partner?(AW)

A Good Friend Means A Good Business Partner?
Since friends are the people whom you can turn to for help, you will immediately take them into consideration when looking for business partners. However, this method may not reach your expecting outcome. It is even said that you can trust your enemies more than your friends in the book <48>. When it comes to the field of business and politics, I think this idea really works. To put it simply, a good friend does not mean a good business partner.
As we all know, there are certain rules and disciplines of dealing with business issues. Just like laws to a country, if the rules in business are not executed strictly, how can we make sure that everything will get along well? However, for the most part, the friendship you cherish can ruin these fundamental disciplines. For an instance, if you start a business with a partner who is also your best friend, it will often happen that he tends to overuse his power which is against the rule. And he may make some important decisions without your consideration, which is usually taken for granted by him. All these can be attributed to that friendship takes priority to the rules in your business.
Another important point is that your friend in the business may not talk to you with frankness, especially the friend you do not trust deeply. For these people, to keep your friendship or to please you is more important than to offer a creative suggestion. Thereby you cannot get an equitable judgment or reflection from them. To this extent, enemies can be more helpful compared with your friend partner.
The last but not the least, compared with others, your friends in business usually tend to expect more from you. In the company, they desire privileges over the average. For example, they want to benefit more from the equal contributions as they feel they have closer relationships with you. In fact, part of the benefits comes from your friendship.
To conclude, the person who can be a good friend in your life may be not suitable to be your business partner. You must evaluate the same person with different norms when it comes to different fields.

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