She had been emailing with her clarinetist off and on for a while now. They had set up some plans about when they would get together to rehearse and she had them down in her calendar. She had sent him the music and checked-in a while ago to make sure he had received it. He had and told her that he was already hard at work practicing on it. She felt relieved. As the time marched on, two weeks out started to become one week away from the beginning of the residency. That relief started to turn into panic. She hadn’t heard back from her clarinetist friend.<\/p>\n

They had a rehearsal scheduled for last Saturday. She had shown up\u00a0and he did\u00a0not. She had emailed him and received a less than conciliatory reply about quintet rehearsal running long and not having service in their rehearsal space for him to let her know. He had asked her to come over to his apartment that night. “We could have wine!” he tried to persuade her. She was miffed. She didn’t want to go over to his apartment and have wine. She wanted to do rehearsal when they had originally agreed they were going to rehearse.<\/p>\n

Flakey Collaborators<\/h3>\n

Now she was worried because he wasn’t responding to her emails. She had sent the first one and no response. She had sent a second one after forty-eight hours. Still, she hadn’t heard a peep. She knew that people were busy right now. But, she saw him responding to other people on Facebook. It made her feel slighted to see that. It was hard to see him talking to other people about potential gigs on social media when she was waiting for a response from him about a real gig that was happening in almost a week! Trying to stay as professional as possible, she typed him another email.<\/p>\n

She got a text from him after ten o’clock that night. “Hey, sorry, about not being able to get back to you.” She read on, “I’ve been really slammed. In fact, I’m not gonna be able to do this project anymore. I have a higher paying gig come up and I have to take that. #poor.” Alarm bells were going off in our diva’s mind. “Steam might actually be coming out of my ears right now,” she panted. “Hashtag poor?” she yelled. “Ugh!”<\/p>\n

Self-Selecting Effectual Partners<\/h3>\n

Taking up her phone like a dagger she started a text back, “What? Really? Are you kidding me?” Waiting impatiently, she saw the bubble with three little dots pop up and then go away. She kept looking at her phone. The screen went black. And, nothing. She kept checking her phone all night and the next day and she never heard back from him. Our diva felt apoplectic.<\/p>\n

She realized now that she made a costly error in trying to work with this two-faced guy. She had been blinded by his skill and her desire to have his name associated with her project. She couldn’t see that he wasn’t that invested in the first place and wouldn’t be a good choice for a partner. Without commitments, you don’t have a partner. She thought back to the research that she had done on effectual entrepreneurship. She had learned that that there’s a difference between effectual partnerships and casual partnerships. She was currently experiencing the fall out from a casual partnership. She failed to find a partner in this clarinetist who could self-select into her venture and bring something to the table. It was a short-sighted decision designed to fit her given goal rather than a true partner.<\/p>\n