I used to believe partnerships either worked or they didn’t.
The two of you have it or you don’t. I calibrated on vibes. So when the energy shifted, or if something dulled or felt off, I didn’t think to repair it. I endured it for a while and then I left.
That belief cost me time.
The partnerships I’ve been most certain about began with instinct. A gut-level conviction that nobody could talk me out of. I was often right, and I’ve always trusted that feeling. It’s powerful. It creates momentum. It makes you brave.
What I never considered is that vibes get you in but they don’t carry you through. They leave when it gets hard.
What I’ve seen, repeatedly, isn’t dramatic collapse. It’s drift. Decisions that were never clarified and friction that was never named. For me, that meant resentment stacking quietly because addressing it felt heavier than absorbing it.
My pattern is simple: grin and bear it. Push it down. Tell myself it’s not a big deal. Keep going. Until one day it is a big deal. And when it becomes a big deal, I don’t negotiate. I exit.
I don’t regret those exits, but I’ve started questioning the silence that preceded them.
Reading Laurie Arron’s The Handshake Meeting forced a realization I hadn’t fully articulated before: I’ve never engineered a partnership. I’ve only entered them.
I’ve never formally defined how we decide, how we disagree, or how we reset when something feels off. I assumed that if two capable people with strong chemistry worked hard enough, alignment would sustain itself.
It doesn’t.
That’s what makes drift more dangerous than conflict. Conflict at least surfaces tension. Drift lets it calcify quietly. The question that stayed with me was this:
If I had engineered those partnerships earlier, would they still be working? Or would they have ended sooner? Either answer would have been clarity which is cheaper than drift.
I asked Laurie something directly: what happens when one person wants to formalize the partnership and the other resists?
What I took from her answer was this: resistance is data. A structured conversation doesn’t create alignment. It reveals whether it exists. That distinction matters.
But she didn’t stop there.
She said if you want a Handshake Meeting and your CEO doesn’t, make it small, practical and tied to outcomes they care about. Lead with the why: “I want to make our operating rhythm easier and faster, especially around decisions and surprises.”
Keep it execution-focused. Clarify decision rights. Reduce last-minute fire drills. Eliminate rework. And don’t make it ceremonial. Let them choose the format: walk-and-talk, quick working session, whatever lowers friction. Start with one or two topics. Keep it tight.
That’s not bureaucracy. That’s operational leverage.
I still believe vibes matter, that’s the spark. But if the partnership matters, it deserves architecture. Otherwise you’re relying on instinct to sustain something that actually requires structure.
You either engineer the relationship, or you drift inside it.
And drift is expensive.
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