Dropped Batons! What Relay Races Have Taught Us About Our Business Partnership

I arrived at the start of our European book tour feeling excited, anxious, and, honestly, a bit annoyed. This was a two-week trip to Europe with Mathias, my co-author and business partner. We had scheduled a mix of work and fun. The work part of the trip included giving a joint talk at LeadDev’s LDX3 conference in front of about 1,000 people (anxiety inducing!), selling and signing books, and visiting local bookstores to drop off some promotional materials. The fun part included lots of cooking, hanging with friends and family, walking (so many steps!), visiting a museum, playing padel for the first time, and lake swimming in Germany, among many other things. There was much to be excited about.

Our conference talk was about intentional communication and not dropping batons. In a relay race, the baton is a handoff between two people. It’s a team event. It’s a we moment, not an I moment. And that’s why we like it as a metaphor for teams. The baton handoff is practiced by relay teams over and over again. It’s not about winning. It’s about consistency, it’s about shared expectations, and it’s about intentionality. In organizations, teams need to practice how things are handed off. They need to pay attention to the signals of dropped batons.

So it’s a bit ironic that when we arrived for our European book tour and conference talk we had completely dropped our own partnership baton. The tension and frustration was palpable, the resentments simmering. The build up to the trip had been hectic. We had a talk to prepare. We had swag to create. We had plans to make. We were both annoyed with each other for different reasons, which mostly had to do with a breakdown in expectations. To add to the mix, a couple months earlier, we had also published our book, which was incredibly consuming. Needless to say, we had a ton of built-up pressure. It was a bumpy moment in our business partnership.

As we sat in the Cotswolds practicing and fine tuning our talk (and as I was recovering from the jet lag), we both recognized the paradox of giving a talk about not dropping batons when we had a dropped baton right in front of us. Business relationships are hard. Heck, relationships are hard. Like relay races, they require regular practice, tending, and focus. A few days into our trip, we started to share about our frustrations. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start. Later that day, we reflected and got a bit more honest with each other. We’re separated by nine time zones. I’m Californian. He’s German. We have different communication habits and styles. We’re from different cultures. We had dropped our “sharing feedback” baton. We hadn’t been true to our partnership blueprint which is meant to guide us during moments of disconnect. And here’s the kicker, we write about all of this in our book!

By the time we gave our talk, which was nearly a week into our trip, we were almost back in sync. We didn’t have everything figured out, but the vibe between us was stronger. In our book and in our talk, we share about our RAD framework, which stands for Reflect, Assess, and Do. It’s a framework for reflections. Having successfully published our book and completed our initial book tours, we now need to figure out what’s next for our partnership and for us individually. We still have plenty of book promotion and sales ahead of us. We both want to create some courses and workshops to go alongside our book. There’s work to do.

After our talk in London, we traveled to Berlin for a long weekend with Mathias’s family. It was there that I was reminded that our business partnership isn’t just about us. It’s not about our book, or about where and what we might be working on. We regularly talk about the Buddhist principle about the vessel and its contents. We used to think that the vessel was the company we worked at or the book we were writing, but we recently realized that we, our partnership, is the vessel. We are the baton. The relay races and the other contents will come and go. We will work on new things, new ideas, and perhaps even new books. But our partnership, and more importantly, our friendship, will stay. Beyond that, my understanding about the vessel and contents principle is that the aim is to understand the impermanence of both the vessel and its contents, which might lead to insight and liberation. Maybe we’ll get there someday!

When Mathias dropped me off at the airport in Berlin for my long trek home, I said, “I appreciate you.” And then I said, “Our partnership is definitely stronger than when I arrived.” He agreed and shared similar sentiments.

And that’s what a baton handoff looks like. Sometimes it’s messy, and that’s okay. It’s about honest reflection. It’s about acknowledging and assessing dropped batons. It’s about learning and moving toward clarity. It’s being humble and admitting our own imperfections. Then it’s about continuing to do the work, over and over again.

Our partnership is now over 7 years old. It started where I was the founder and CEO and Mathias was the CTO. It then evolved to us being founding partners and equal owners of our own company, The Intentional Organization. And now we’re co-authors of our book, The Intentional Organization: A Leadership and Management Guide. Even after all of these years, our partnership still requires regular practice and attention, just like the baton handoff in a relay race. As I type this post on my flight back to Los Angeles, I can honestly say that I’m looking forward to the next 7 years and beyond.

Here are the slides for our talk, here’s the video of our talk, and here’s a post we wrote for LeadDev about not dropping batons!

Thanks to everyone who shared such lovely feedback on our talk. And thanks for buying all of our books! We sold out of all the copies we had with us, but you can still buy our book online. You can learn more about the book, including where you can purchase it at: intentionalorganization.com/book.

Tschüss!*

• Tschüss is a common and casual way to say goodbye in German. It’s my favorite new word.