Business Mediation

BMC Associates is a pioneer in conflict prevention, conflict mediation and organizational consulting for partners, family businesses and others who must work together collaboratively.

Since its founding 20 years ago, BMC has guided its clients through sensitive business and interpersonal issues with the goal of achieving agreements that serve the interests of all parties.

This collaborative approach, in contrast to power plays, conflict and litigation, can result in speedy economical resolution of issues while strengthening important business and personal relationships.

Mobius is delighted to extend to our clients the following services in collaboration with BMC: Partner Coaching, Business Mediation, and Partnership Charters.

Partner Coaching

Mobius and BMC Associates jointly offer Partner Coaching services to people who are business partners – both family and non-family partners. The business partner relationship is most commonly compared to spouses and is certainly one of the most challenging relationships any person can have. Partner Coaches have a special expertise in working with both the particular dynamics of partners (e.g., personalities, expectations, fairness, trust) and the substantive issues partners routinely face (e.g., finances, roles, owner- ship, decision-making).

The goals of Partner Coaching include building collaboration and strengthening partner relationships, helping partners navigate differences, and developing and executing long-term partnership plans.

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Intention is not a powerful force, it is the only force.

W. Brian Arthur

Business Mediation

Mobius and BMC Associates work in partnership to mediate the important business relationships among co-owners, board members and executive teams. Clients include public and private family and non-family for-profit companies as well as nonprofit organizations and foundations. The issues in these relationships are typically a mix of business, financial, legal and interpersonal issues, and because of this inherent complexity, Mobius-BMC uses two- person co-mediator teams comprised of neutrals from psychology, finance, law and business. The exact mix of expertise is based on the needs of the client situation.

The goals of mediation are to (1) create written agreements that (2) resolve the current issues as quickly and effectively as possible, (3) prevent any reoccurrence, and (4) leave the relationships among the parties stronger and healthier (if the parties wish to continue working together).

Mediation, which is simply assisted negotiation, is a powerful tool for getting partners, board members or executives back on track so they can get back to business. Perhaps the greatest advantage of mediation over other methods of resolving business disputes is that it keeps the decision-making in the hands of the people themselves. Mediators control the process and the parties control the outcome. Resolutions arise through collaboration and consensus. The other ad- vantages include the speed of arriving at a resolution, privacy, the lower cost, a focus on the future, and the flexibility to deal with all aspects of the conflict, whether “hard” financial issues or “soft” emotional and interpersonal issues.

Partnership Charters

Mobius and BMC Associates jointly offer Partnership Charter (PC) services for closely held businesses (both family and non-family co-owners). Our PC offering is based on two observations: One, research has proven that entrepreneurs with partners are more successful than solo entrepreneurs, and two, partnerships fail with striking regularity. The biggest reason they fail is poorly planned partnerships. The PC process makes up for the fact that, despite how challenging it is to have partners, entrepreneurs receive no training in how to be partners, and legal documents alone do not really prepare partners for how to be strong partners.

The PC is a structured set of exercises and negotiations that cover the nine critical business, financial and interpersonal issues that can destroy otherwise healthy partnerships. The core PC offering is a three-day Partner Retreat for new or existing partners that leads to agreements and a written PC document detailing how the partners will operate collaboratively over the lifetime of their partnership, including how the partnership will eventually end or transform. The PC becomes the basis for customized legal documents.

This insight allows conflict resolution professionals to bring a far more advanced and sophisticated set of mediative methods and techniques to every aspect of organizational life; to assist it in preventing, mitigating, resolving, and most importantly, learning from its chronic conflicts. It is this extraordinary opportunity that gives mediation a unique role to play in organizational development, and allows it to adapt highly effective techniques and harness them to the human side of organizational development.

Kenneth Cloke
Mobius Senior Expert