Friends at Home, Not at Work

In Newport Beach, Calif., in 1961, two former Harvard classmates reunited with a business idea for land development. They both recognized the migration toward Southern California during the 1960s and sensed there was a great opportunity to develop a forward-thinking real estate plan. The men (The Daily Coach promised to keep their names private) were friends, though certainly not best friends, but they formed a partnership based on their shared location and utilized each other's strengths. Once they concocted their plan and defined their roles, they also settled on another pivotal part of their agreement: they would never become best friends. They would never share holiday meals, they would never vacation together, never allow their wives to become friendly or permit their kids to attend the same school. This arrangement was solely business — and had to remain a business arrangement forever.

Now, both men are in their 80s looking back on their highly successful lives aiming to pass along some wisdom. When someone asked them independently the reasons for their success, they both answered the same way: We were never personal friends. We never crossed any lines from our personal life to our business life. We stayed in our respective lanes, doing our jobs to the best of our ability with complete trust in one another. We never had to listen to either of us complain about who had the bigger swimming pool or who took a longer vacation as the relationship never crossed those lines. Both men felt this allowed them to remove jealousy and bias from their decision making. It might seem coldhearted to be part of a team with no intimate relationship with those you work alongside. Yet, this arrangement worked well for the pair — because they needed to rely on pure, unfiltered decisions without outside interference.

We all want to hire our friends, people we share a common bond with, to work alongside us. On paper, it looks like a foolproof plan; yet, how many times have we seen friendships end because of business relationships? One of the many lessons we can learn from our two Harvard graduates is to define the roles of the business relationship beforehand. Don’t allow the business element to intersect with personal lives and vice versa. If we are gung-ho on hiring our friends, we MUST set hard-fast ground rules to protect all of those, including our families. It becomes critical to define roles, stay in your designated lanes and trust the person will be accountable and leave the friendship at the door when you enter work.

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