No doubt, more people want to go into a joint venture than go off to a business on their own. And who can really blame them? A joint venture gives you benefits that you will not get from having a single proprietorship business. With a joint venture, the risk is less, the work is less and of course, the number of ideas that you can come up with are doubled, tripled… depending on the number of partners that you have in the business.
But as most people who have gone to business with other people have realized, a joint venture is not all sweetness and light. It can turn into a nightmare if you do not take care it. Here are some of the downsides of getting into a joint venture and how to avoid or prevent it:
1. Slow management of business
Decision-making will be slower because the opinions of the other partners are needed before one can make a decision. This can slow down the operations and may result to lost opportunity. If all the opinions are not sought, discord among the partners can start.
How to solve: One can avoid this by making sure that one or two member of the company will be given the power of attorney to make decisions for the group. That way, the company can keep up with suppliers and the operations. Only the big decisions that can affect the company long term will be consulted with each partner.
2. Too many ideas, no agreement
Although it is good to have more than one thinking heads, it can also be a problem when no agreements are reached. Just imagine having a lot of ideas on the table but nothing concrete to work on. Too many people who want to get their voices heard can create problems within the company.
How to solve: The best thing to do about this is to devise a system wherein partners will have limit on the number of ideas that they will come up with and to have a deadline for narrowing down the ideas into something that everyone can work on and deal with.
3. Inequality with the brunt of work
Knowing that there are partners who can take over for them, some people slack off and do not do the job. They pass their responsibilities to their partners and just give a variety of excuse. Also, in any kind of group, there will be people who will be doing most of the work while others will just be sitting on the sidelines. It’s natural for a group to have inequality of workload even when there is a clear division of labor.
How to solve: To make sure that at the very least you will have more or less the same workload, you need to define the job of each one and to make it clear from the start that slacking off is not to be tolerated and if they don’t take care of their end of the business, they can lose some percentage in the final profit sharing.
There are just more than enough accounting and business reasons to get into a joint venture. Your company could truly benefit from partnering with other firms with complementary resources and abilities like distribution channels, technology, and finance, among others. It is not surprising that these days, almost all companies are getting into or at least considering participating into joint ventures. Take note that not all joint ventures succeed. Experts assert that only about 40% of such business endeavors last and achieve goals.
Getting into a joint venture is like getting into a give and take relationship. In such a business effort, you should also contribute to the alliance instead of just reaping benefits from it. Your contribution could also be in the form of capital or expertise/technical share. Just like any other business strategies and measures, joint ventures have their own sets of general advantages and disadvantages.
First on the list of pros, a joint venture could bring about opportunities to gain or learn new expertise or capacity. Even major or huge companies decide to get into such initiatives especially when they lack specific technical capability or expertise. Through a joint venture, they could learn the skills and technical capacity they need by the end of the partnership.
Second, a joint venture could enable companies to enter into related business activities, reach new geographic markets, or attain new technological skills or knowledge. The businesses could access greater resources, including new technology and specialized staff.
Of course, a joint venture would force companies to share risks. If your business could not gather the guts to try out a new initiative or project because of the risks involved, you could still pursue the endeavor by making it a joint venture with other firms. This way, the chances of success are made bigger and more achievable. Joint ventures are naturally flexible. It could exist in a limited, specified period or just cease to operate once common objectives and business goals are met.
For the list of cons, joint ventures could be taken as mere strategies of opportunistic partners to gain exposure to a new business segment. In many cases, some companies also use the effort just to poach technical experts and professionals from other companies. Joint ventures could also end up in disaster. According to market analyses, up to 60% of all joint businesses worldwide end up in failure.
It could take too much effort and time to establish the right and healthy relationship between joint venture partners. There could be inevitable problems. The joint venture objectives and goals may not be fully clear and well communicated to all participants. There could be imbalance in the level of investments, expertise, and assets infused into the project by the partners. Then, there could be less cooperation and poor integration because of varying management styles and cultures of joint venture partners.
Remember that is always imperative to review your current business strategies and objectives prior to committing into any joint venture. It is important that you first choose the right partners and re-assess your need to actually partner with anyone or any other business for a project of endeavor.