Case study of the differences and delusions that forced a partnership and friendship to dissolve.
ReconcilableDifferencesPartners rarely split over matters of grand strategy. It's the minor skirmishes that nibble away at common ground, until there's none left. So it was with Arthur Eisenberg and Cap Pannell, good friends whose rapid accumulation of differences and delusions forced them to scrap the company they had worked so hard to create
Arthur Eisenberg once ran a company with the simple yet elegant name of Eisenberg Inc.
But that was three companies ago -- which places it all the way back in 1988. Over the past three years, Eisenberg's design firm has undergone more incarnations than Shirley MacLaine's soul: from Eisenberg/Pannell/St. George, to The New Eisenberg, to the current Eisenberg and Associates. During the 1970s he was one-half of Eisenberg + Pannell.
Unless you happen to supply Eisenberg's stationery, those changes are reasons for sadness. Eisenberg and Cap Pannell teamed up in their twenties, built a $1-million design firm, then went their separate ways four years later. The split was amicable; during the buyout, their lawyer had to remind them not to be so friendly. A little more than two years ago, Eisenberg decided they ought to be partners again. So Pannell and Eisenberg merged their two companies, joining forces once more (and adding Carol St. George, Pannell's wife, for bad measure).
As partners go, they seemed archetypally well suited to each other: Eisenberg, the gregarious marketer who sometimes couldn't shut up; Pannell, so quiet that people were startled when he cleared his throat at meetings. One drew pictures, the other projections. "People have told us that we balance each other great," says Pannell. Indeed. This past August, around the same time a national design magazine lauded their work, Eisenberg and Pannell broke up again. This time, it got ugly.
Not that there were any messy and protracted courtroom battles or ballistic shouting matches or childish stunts. Neither one locked the other out of the company's offices. Still, their disappointment was deep and cutting. "I really cannot forgive him right now in my heart," says Pannell.
He speaks from his unfinished home office, just steps away from his son's bedroom. When he has enough clients, he says, he'll build a separate entrance. But just now, a man who only months ago was a partner in a nearly $2-million concern finds himself in "financial jeopardy" -- and unable to fathom the events that landed him there. "This is such a setback," he says. "I've got to get some work." Not far away, at the Dallas headquarters of their former business, Eisenberg frets that the growth he envisioned will never materialize. "We had an opportunity," he says. "I'm pissed that it didn't work out."
Why did their partnership fail? Like most partners, Eisenberg and Pannell seem blind to what actually tore them apart. They settle for hurling a vague but potent accusation at each other: You are not the person I thought you were. Too often, that's how partners end up -- with a sense that somehow the other person couldn't hold up his end of the log. Despite their long shared history, Eisenberg and Pannell act as if they discovered something about each other that made it impossible for them to continue. Eisenberg: "My problem is that I didn't research my partner enough." Pannell: "I guess I didn't realize that Arthur was just an opportunist."
Absurd charges, to be sure. Not that either of them is wrong. But it's more comforting, and less lonely, to feel let down. In truth, there was nothing inevitable about the split between Eisenberg and Pannell. Almost up to the last moment, either partner could have nudged them off the course they were on. But growing bitterness and the press of daily business prevented them from honestly confronting and sorting through their mostly minor disputes. To endure as a team, they needed to build what every healthy partnership requires: a stockpile of perspective.
Partnerships do not fracture over matters of grand strategy. Rather, insidious skirmishes slowly nibble away at any common ground -- until, finally, there is none. Looking closely at the deterioration can be scary and sad; you begin to see how swiftly the distance grows, how quickly the delusions accumulate. And how easily two people -- in this case, Eisenberg and Pannell -- can come to believe that their differences justify scrapping the company they worked so hard to build.
"I'm bewildered," says Pannell. "I don't understand this."
* * *
Eisenberg and Pannell's first endeavor left little mystery in its wake. Even when they decided to split, in February 1979, they made no secret of their warm feelings. Arriving at a party at Pannell's home, a giddy Eisenberg sported a T-shirt that read, "Cap Who?" and lobbed Pannell his own "Arthur Who?" version.
Both were in their early thirties, and though they had built a $1-million design firm, each was itching to get out on his own. Much later the term "work ethic" would become a code phrase, a sharp dart they would aim at each other. Back then, though, nobody doubted their determination.
Hard work, in fact, had brought them together. Fresh out of school, both had joined The Richards Group, the hottest design firm in the Southwest, in 1971. It was an eat-what-you-kill environment; the company hired them young and worked them hard. Arthur and Cap -- whom nobody ever called by his full name, Clarence -- commiserated during their commute.
Finally, one morning at two o'clock, Eisenberg crawled into his colleague's office. He'd been thinking, he said, that if he was going to work this hard, he'd rather work for himself. Did Pannell want to come along?
