| After a marriage and a divorce I can expand on this (marital lessons reframed for business though). There's a second question to ask: how often do you fight? If you are generally in alignment but disagree sometimes / occasionally, that's good. If you seem to disagree most of the time, that's a problem. Other specifics I'd look at: - are you aligned on the fundamentals? (e.g. B2C vs B2B) - do you fight the same way? If one of you prefers rational discussion and the other prefers combative, whoever-sticks-longest-wins then it's going to go poorly - how do the fights end? "ok, after thinking about it, I think you were right about XYZ" is very different from "fine, whatever. I'm tired of arguing." - do you resolve issues and come to agreement or do the same topics come up again and again? - after a conclusion is reached and a plan is put together, do both parties fulfill their pieces of it reliably and on time? One very simple way to avoid issues during fights is the 'I statement': "I feel my opinions get ignored a lot..." is a lot less escalation-inducing than "You always ignore my opinions". |