The corporate landscape is littered with wrecked pairings. The failed co-CEO arrangement between Time Warner's Steve Ross and Nick Nicholas and the broken partnership of CitiGroup's Sanford Weill and John Reed prove that even a fat dowry isn't enough to keep harmony. Not so good, says psychologist David Gage.
More business partnerships break up every year than marriages.
Within the first year probably half of them fail. This partnership charter differs from the typical legal agreement. In fact, it differs from just about any business document you've probably ever seen. If this seems uncomfortably intimate, that's the point. The process of drafting the document, which can be 20 pages or longer, brings to the surface the personality traits and values that shape each partner's expectations.