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Who's In Charge of Your Joint Venture?

By Christian Fea
Jun 25, 2009
When you agreed to formulate a joint venture with your partner, did you both decide who would have the final word on all important and major decisions? Perhaps you both want to be in complete agreement on all decisions. Or perhaps one of you is more capable of making final choices confidently, soundly, and reasonably. In any case, before you finalize your agreement, you should decide how decisions are to be made.

A joint venture is much like a partnership. But instead of managing all aspects of a business from deciding office location to hiring staff to capitalization, you and your partner are in charge of a specific "venture" which incorporates the strengths of both businesses. The venture could be as simple as cross promotion in each others' retail locations or as complicated as forming a new business entity which will be the origin of the JV deal.

Thus, depending on how complicated your partnership is, you will need a way for decisions to be made that will help business process along smoothly and efficiently. Here are some possible decider formations:

Choose One

Do you or your JV partner have extensive managerial experience? It may be possible that one of you is more suited to making final decisions. Extensive years of managerial experience can be beneficial in making sound business choices regarding staffing, marketing, financing, budgeting, inventory control, production, and any other category related to making a business successful.

If you have developed a joint venture relationship with someone with this kind of extensive decision-making experience, you may want to let all final decisions be deferred to wisdom and experience. This is not to say that you'll be left out of the decision making process. Your input and opinion should be valued by your JV partner and should always be considered before making decisions.

Make Joint Decisions

If you and your partner work well together and have similar managerial backgrounds and experience you may find that you can come to joint decisions on all issues. This means that cooperation abounds between you and your partner and you are able to come up with and discuss options. No one person has final authority, but you both may take a stand on a particular issue. Though you may have differing opinions, it is important that both partners are able to make a case and present supporting arguments for their reasoning.

Divide Decisions Based on Expertise

If your JV requires a number of decisions, such as accounting, marketing, staffing, etc., you may want to divide the decision making process to the one with the most experience in that category. For instance, all accounting, finance, and capitalization decisions may go to the CPA, while the marketing, promotion, and sales decisions go to the one who is the outgoing salesperson. This may be a good way to capitalize on each of your expertise.

JV decisions may be few or plentiful. But with the right method of decision-making, your JV will have the road paved for a smooth ride.
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