The endeavor, moreover, is taking its toll on the partners. In the past two years there have been defections in Atlanta, San Francisco, and Chicago, major markets for America's biggest landlord. Among the defectors was Ned Spieker; 11 partners and about 100 employees broke away with him. "The kind of people who are good at real estate do not respond well to structure," Spieker is on record as saying, back in the days when he was proud to be a member of the TCC family. And so, with the coming of "structure," he quit the partnership. Allan Hamilton in Chicago, the first big defector, who'd been a partner for about 19 years, put the matter more brutally. "TCC is an administrative monster now, unlike the organization that prevailed so beautifully for so many years. . . . They thought they had to reshuffle the deck, and in the process they broke the traditional relationships that had grown up among the subordinate partnerships. People who reported to me were ordered to report to others. This was hard to take. A long time had gone into establishing those relationships. They were natural pecking orders, and they worked real well. The reorganization of 1986 mixed oil and water, different working styles."
There is also a grand and stirring human drama being played out here. It is fairly clear, for example, that Ned Spieker's disaffection for the TCC has as much to do with his being cut off from personal access to Crow the man, Crow his inspiration and mentor, Crow his "father," as it does with the restructuring of the company. "How does the center of a company keep the periphery happy?" he asked last summer, echoing a reporter's question. "Through personal magnetism. Trouble comes when you insulate the magnet. Personal relationships are everything in a partnership. It's not a matter of structure or distance, it's the diluting of personal relationships."
None of the defections has much disturbed the cool, clean, powerful engine of market domination that Crow and Williams have made of the Trammell Crow Co. The partners that remain "in the family" are, in fact, just as tickled to be Trammell Crow's sons as he is proud to be their father. TCC is filled with a spirit of corporate narcissism. Ask almost any one of Crow's partners about his social life, and he will tell you that a notable portion of it is spent with fellow partners.
The narcissism is underwritten, too, by the partnership principle that still animates and articulates each of the company's divisions, pyramidal though they are. At the bottom of the two real-estate divisions, for example, the M.B.A.s still have to get their shirts wrinkled as leasing agents before moving on up to partner. Thereafter the hierarchy is clear: project partner, divisional partner, regional partner, finally national partner. Your place in this scheme also determines your "take" of any given project. Project and divisional partners get 25% to 30% of the profits, a regional partner 15% to 25%. The national partners, of whom there are currently 10, share 15%, with the national partner in charge of the project getting one-third of that. The Crow family gets 15%, the managing partner group, 10%. Another 5% goes to a profit-sharing trust for all nonpartners, with the remainder going to Trammell Crow Ltd., a pool for all partners.
As for Trammell Crow himself, the truth is that the master builder is extremely pleased with his handiwork. To some people, his story might seem to be unfolding like King Lear's, the old man handing over the reins of power to his successors, only to see them transform his kingdom into a strange and hostile place. But it has never seemed like that to him. Again and again last spring he told his visitor that, yes, his company was the greatest and proudest of all his accomplishments, but that it wasn't his accomplishment alone, not by a long shot. "You've got to know and remember that this company wasn't made by me," he says, "but by Don and Joel -- and 100 others." The even-handedness isn't quite perfect. Perhaps because Williams has always been closest to him, geographically speaking, perhaps because he is now the sovereign, not just the heir apparent, the old man's pride focuses on him. "He's a better man than I am," he says. "He's the guy who made this a great company. How did I know he was the man to do it? I'm that smart." Crow grins -- a quick mischievous grin. "He had the talent, the personality, the intellect. He was the man everybody would accept as leader. I called him in 'cause it was time, 'cause he was there, ready, right for the job. So I did it. Smartest thing I ever did."
Clearly, the old man's energy, will, and optimism are undiminished. When Spieker announced his withdrawal from the partnership, Crow wrote him a note that, according to Spieker, thanked him for helping Crow make all that money. Nor does he look back. Crow might have handed over managerial responsibilities to Williams, but his presence in the company, as a source of inspiration, wisdom, and cunning, seems all the greater for his "retirement." In fact, a kind of synergy has developed between the old shoot-'em-up cowboy deal maker, with his night-school degree in accounting, and the suave, stay-pressed young men from Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton.
Instinctively, Trammell Crow has always understood the tragicomic moral of life in a remorselessly changing world: that to save something it is always necessary to destroy it.
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Nelson W. Aldrich Jr. is a free-lance writer in New York City. His most recent book is Old Money (Knopf).
