Co-authored with Laura Martin

Yes, a great business partnership results from intention and thoughtfulness. However, these commonly thrown-around abstractions are practically useless unless we define them in observable behaviors.

My partner and I (Laura Martin) launched our company one year ago. And while reality has exceeded our most optimistic hopes, what matters most to us is how our business partnership has developed and grown. It’s certainly a major reason we’ve performed so well.

Granted, we started from an advantageous position: a wonderfully collaborative four-year relationship at another company. And while work friendships are forged in fire, you don’t really know someone until you launch a two-person, 50-50 partnership and start every day with a 60-minute check-in. (Consider that the 11th rule.)

Our recipe for creating the luck required for success is spending *a lot *of time reflecting and discussing how the partnership works best. In some cases, we’ve been intentional in practice from the beginning. In other cases, we’ve observed what emerges and adjusted accordingly. And in some cases, conflict brought clarity.

What we’ve learned:

#10 – Kindness is cooler than coolness, and effusiveness is too.

Life is intense; owning a business makes it more so. In the most important moments, we don’t need charming, clever, smooth, or charismatic. We need kind. We need someone invested in lessening our hurt.

And we like effusiveness, too. It’s wonderful, and far too rare, to be consistently reminded why you are appreciated and admired by those closest to you.

#9 – If a goal does not translate directly to an experiment, it is useless.

Experimentation is the surest path to continued relevance, and complacency is slow-motion suicide. The idea of an annual or even quarterly goal in the 21st century is absurd. Its only functional purpose is to cover a lack of action.

We’ve lost the plot if a goal does not provide a clear path that will result in applicable learning moving forward.

#8 – Every conversation starts personal, or we’ve lost all perspective.

If we don’t have a genuine interest in how the other’s life is going, every day, we’re not actually connected. We have a transactional relationship that will endure nothing. No staying power means no success.

There’s no need for an intellectual reason to care, but here’s one anyway. How can you possibly know what role to play on any given day if you don’t know what your partner is going through?

#7 – No mistakes mean no effort, and mistakes with accountability are treasures.

It’s not comfortable to acknowledge the infinite human capacity for mistakes, but there is no relationship between comfortable and important. If no mistakes are made, no real work is being done.

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Foolish people dodge responsibility for mistakes. We embrace accountability. It’s the fastest path to improvement and trust. Do you want a partner who never makes mistakes? Or a partner who takes immediate accountability for mistakes, addresses them, and takes steps to ensure they don’t happen again? (Hint: Only one of those two choices actually exists.)

#6 – No arguments mean no passion, and arguments prove we can always reconnect.

Just about everyone agrees: People who are passionate about their work tend to work harder and better. And yet showing passion about work is one of the great career derailers in corporate America.

Imagine we have a plan we care deeply about and to which we are totally committed. Then someone says, “No.” Do we shrug and say, “Okay?” No, we fight, but we fight fair and towards a goal. How else are passionate human beings supposed to do it?

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But the best part is that every argument concludes with a reconnection, which provides all the reassurance we need that we’ll always be able to reach one another. Fighting is safe and necessary.

#5 – To-do lists are collective, contextual, and updated hourly.

Our clients and prospects don’t care whose job it is; they only care whether we offer the promised result. We don’t care whose job it is, either.

Certainly, ideal scenarios exist in which each partner can focus on strengths and the work they love. But reality exists, too. I may have owned a task this morning, but after a huge project dropped that I need to address, my partner owns it now.

#4 – You’re allowed to have a bad stretch. Your partner has your back.

A popular desk placard reads, “Only mediocre people are at their best every day.” Damn straight.

The idea that human beings engaged in the trials and tribulations of human life will always be the same at work and always perform at their best is...silly.

Everyone in the world needs support during a bad stretch. Only people with great business partners get it.

#3 – Errors in judgment are unavoidable, and failing to correct them is moronic

Errors in judgment are very different from mistakes, but require the identical treatment plan:

• Zero defensiveness
• Learned lesson
• Agile response

We tie our self-worth to how we respond to inevitable errors in judgment, not whether we make them. We’re smart enough to know that we will.

#2 – If Lennon or McCartney wanted individual credit, there’d be no Beatles.

What they knew as artists applies in business. Once ideas and thoughts are sufficiently intermingled, they become something new, and tracing individual contributions becomes simultaneously impossible and pointless.

When you spend 700 hours talking to someone over the course of a year, your professional minds become something new, as well. “Yes, I had a great idea. But only because you had a great insight, framing, challenge, comment.”

Nobody cares, least of all us. May everyone experience the joy of being part of something in which the total is greater than the sum of the individual parts.

#1 – “I promise to tell you if I am upset, don’t waste time worrying about it otherwise.”

This is reason number one because rumination is that bad. Nothing is more destructive to relationships, organizations, productivity, or mental health than rumination.

Rumination is negative cyclical thinking; it allows no off-ramp. Literally nothing worthwhile results, but it does untold damage, internally and externally. Anything that reduces rumination is intrinsically positive; it replaces stuck pessimism with driven optimism. This rule ensures we never ruminate about the other. Nothing has proven more important.

That’s what the abstractions of intention and thoughtfulness look like to us. They require a lot of work. Until they don’t.

Laura Martin is co-founder and CEO of The Glinda Group, helping organizations thrive through the application of social science. She was previously a senior leader at Target, ADP, Razr, and BMS.