Renegotiation Is Hygiene
One of the founders I coach came into a session with what she thought was a legal question. She and her business partner had set their partnership terms early, before either of them knew what the business would actually require of them. The terms still worked on paper, but they no longer reflected who was doing what. She'd been aware of the gap for about six months.
"Can you renegotiate something like that?" she asked. "Or does opening it up just create problems?"
I've been asked some version of this question more times than I can count. Sometimes it's about equity. Sometimes about a client retainer priced for a different scope, or a vendor agreement that made sense before the company scaled, or a year-old salary band.
The question underneath all of them is the same: do I have the right to reopen this?
The answer is yes. You can renegotiate anything you've ever agreed to, always, forever, to the day you die. None of it has to be confrontational. You're just resetting the expectations you both started with.
In business culture, we treat agreements like a moral commitment. Revisiting what we signed feels like admitting we took advantage of the original terms, or that we don't honor our word. So we let the terms run. We adjust the business around the agreement, instead of adjusting the agreement around the business.
That is backwards, and it’s expensive.
Renegotiation isn’t confrontation. I see it as good hygiene. The agreements that stay current are the ones you come back to.
An agreement is a snapshot of what two partners bet will make sense for them, at a specific moment. You can’t know what will happen in the future, so you do your best to agree with the information you have now.
Example, I hire a Head of Marketing. We both agree to work together with the information we each have. About 6 months in, we can honestly both say we have new information on each other, the scope of work, the business, etc. This leaves us with an opportunity to revisit our agreement. Do we still want to work together, at the same terms or does my Head of Marketing want different terms? Or does the information I have now lead me to see this isn’t the right fit for the next 12 months anymore?
The agreement rests on time-dependent specifics: the business size, the scope, the market, etc. It was designed to fit only that reality, which obviously changes.
Most agreements have a useful life of six months to two years. The snapshot drifts from reality, and one of you pays for the gap. The CEO who never renegotiates isn't honoring her word. She's letting a past version of herself govern a business the past version never ran.
I’ve signed terms I knew were generous and terms I knew weren’t. The ones that aged badly were always the ones I never revisited. And the reason I didn’t revisit them is always the same: I felt a sense of misplaced loyalty.
Renegotiating terms can feel like saying one of you got shortchanged in the original deal, which means one of you was the bad guy. If you're asking to change the deal, you must want more than you agreed to take. Another founder during a renegotiation said it plainly: I don’t want them to think I’m being difficult.
That story keeps agreements in place long after they've stopped serving either partner.
I've watched this play out enough times now to know how it usually goes. A founder spends six months working up to the conversation. She opens with some version of: this made sense when we set it up, and I want to make sure it still does. The other person exhales. Some version of I figured this was coming, I should have said something too comes back inside the first minute. The restructure that took six months to brace for happens in an hour.
That's the shape these conversations usually take, once you stop treating them as confrontations.
A renegotiation practice in a business looks like this:
Every six months (or more frequently for arrangements with more moving parts), review the key agreements that shape how the business operates: partnership terms, client retainers, key vendor agreements, co-founder equity and compensation, advisor arrangements, senior employee terms.
For each one, ask two questions. Does this still reflect what both partners are contributing and receiving? And does it still reflect what the business needs? If yes to both, leave it. If no to either, it's time to reopen the conversation.
When you sit down for the first review, start with the agreements with the most movement in them: the equity and compensation structures predating a significant shift in company stage or individual role, the retainers where scope has expanded without terms following, and the partnership agreements neither partner has explicitly revisited in the last eighteen months. These are the ones likely to be running on a snapshot that no longer fits. Founders who do this audit typically find two or three.
The framing is simple: "This made sense when we set it up. I want to make sure it still makes sense for both of us." That is the entire opener. The framing makes no accusation the original terms were unfair. It only acknowledges time has passed and you'd rather revisit this intentionally than let the gap widen.
You're communicating you take the relationship seriously enough to keep it current. That's different from renegotiating because you feel like you're losing. The first builds trust. The second strains it.
You don't need to walk in with a proposal. Say what you've noticed shifting, and ask what they've been seeing. Most of the time, they've been watching the same gap. The first conversation isn't where you land new terms. It's where you both agree to look at them together.
Some agreements take more than one conversation. If the other person is uneasy, the first sit-down isn't where you settle anything. You confirm you both see what's changed, and you leave the door open for a week or two. Most resistance softens once they've had time to absorb that the conversation has started.
The conversation feels like a risk from inside your head and like relief from outside it. The fear fits a confrontation that almost never happens. Most partners have already noticed the gap, most clients understand scope changes, and most co-founders have been quietly waiting for the other to bring it up.
What you're protecting isn't the agreement. It's the story you've built about what asking would mean about you.
The businesses that stay well-structured aren't the ones that sign perfect agreements. They're the ones that revisit often enough that no agreement drifts far enough from reality to cause real damage. You make the conversation routine, so it loses the weight you've been assigning it.
One question worth sitting with this week: which agreements still reflect a version of the business that no longer exists? Would you make that agreement today, with the same terms, knowing what you know now?
-Christine
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