Two companies had been working together for a while to put together a deal whereby one (the smaller company) would be the IT Partner for the other.

Negotiations and discussions had progressed well, a good relationship existed between the players and they were close to signing the partnering deal.

At one of the last meetings, before they signed, the CEO of the ‘Customer’ company decided to attend the meeting. She had been invited to participate right from the start and had met the people involved, but handed over responsibility to one of her Managers.

At this last meeting, the CEO asked questions, challenged everything that had been agreed by the team (her Managers and the IT Partner company), was adversarial, aggressive, and generally disruptive.

The IT Partner Company walked away from the meeting and told the other company they were no longer interested in finalising the deal.

What would you have done?

What issues does this raise?

Once you’ve thought about this – check out Walk Away Part 2 to see what happened in this situation.