"I've never been cavalier about screwing people over," Cosor protested at one point.
"I didn't say that," responded Studley.
Cosor: "Well, but you did."
Pausing, Cosor looked over and said apologetically, "We're still in repair mode." As if he needed to point it out. Nowadays, Studley will get on the all-company loudspeaker and say, somewhat artlessly, "Hey, great job. Really, really good job." Says Elaine with a laugh: "You can tell he's practicing--we joke about Jeffrey's sensitivity training. But it really is appreciated."
Indeed, it's little gestures such as those--not sea changes in anyone's personality--that have brought tensions back down to antebellum levels. Notes Mardy Grothe, "Often profound changes can be made in a relationship with a very small behavior change."
Whether the peace will prove to be a lasting one, of course, is anybody's guess. "I think we've got the skill set, but are we implementing it?" asks Nancy Eller. "There might be more trust, but it's still two separate businesses, really." One ominous sign: just a few weeks ago, Studley sprayed Cosor with a can of mace.
All right, all right, so that was actually an accident. But vigilance is the watchword. To make sure the same old conflicts don't resurface under a different guise, Cosor is cobbling together a board of advisers. He and Studley are finally building some internal controls, such as push-button financial reports, and they've institutionalized off-site retreats so they can leave behind what's urgent to discuss what's truly important over a steak and a scotch. They continue to meet with Wylie. And most recently, they've been trying to extricate themselves from their respective divisions. "I think the biggest challenge," explains Studley, "is to build middle management enough so that we can actually manage the business together--again."
"The reality is that a partnership really is like a marriage," says Cosor. It's in many ways as complicated and as vulnerable to the corrosive effects of unspoken fears and needs--emotions that partners too often dismiss as irrelevant to a "business" relationship. A partnership is also--dare we say it?--hard work. That fact eluded Cosor and Studley for years. Now they get it. Now they work to forestall the dangerous misinterpretations of each other's actions and motives that so wounded their partnership in the first place.
"The truth is," Studley says about their pre-marriage-counseling days, "we still thought highly of each other's goals, intellect, and values. We still had this core love for each other. It hadn't been thrown out, just overlaid with things."
"It's like a car that builds up a crust of salt and dust," Cosor adds. "Underneath, it may still be a beautiful car." Underneath, in other words, it may still be summers in the Catskills, happy bonds of brotherlike affection, shared breakthroughs in a start-up garage.
"I'm so grateful to be in a good relationship with him now," says Cosor.
"It's as easy as a light switch," says Studley. "It's just really hard to find."
Jerry Useem is a senior writer at Inc.
The Rules
The art (not science) of picking the right partner
Leigh Griffith, a lawyer at Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, in Nashville, remembers the time two men came into his office and announced that they wanted to form a partnership. One was going to be the CEO. The other was to put up the money. "They had a concept," recalls Griffith, "and they were both going to make a million dollars on it."
So Griffith walked them through some rudimentary questions. "Who's going to have control?" he asked. The would-be CEO spoke up first: "I'm running it, so me." But the money man quickly contradicted him: "Well, it's my money." The two finally agreed that a third party would break any impasse.
Griffith moved on to question number two. "If this guy puts up more money," he asked, pointing at the financier, "does he get more control?" Another hot disagreement ensued, during which the money man began gesticulating violently in his swivel chair. The chair broke, sending him tumbling. The partnership fell apart, too. "They had come in expecting a bridal suite," says Griffith, "and 30 minutes later they left with pieces of chair on the ground."
Such is the half-baked thinking behind many a partnership. Says Mardy Grothe, a Bedford, Mass., psychologist who counsels partners, "It's amazing to me that people don't sit down and talk about it." They don't subject their choices to even a modicum of scrutiny, although it's likely they'll spend more time with their partners than with their spouses.
So how does one find the right fit? "Do a little dating," suggests Peter Wylie, a Washington, D.C., psychologist. "Take on a challenge together, like meeting a deadline." Dennis Jaffe, a San Francisco-based consultant, suggests drawing up "a statement of expectations--a charter, a constitution that can be referred to." And not with any lawyers around: "Draw it up yourself, in your own words."
Or simply talk. "Let's sit down and talk about the reservations that are being dimly experienced deep in our gut," Grothe counsels, "that we're almost pushing out of the way because we want to go into this thing with fervor."
He also recommends asking a prospect for permission to talk to someone he or she has partnered with in the past: "If someone says, 'No way,' that would be a bit of a red flag."
But perhaps the most important due diligence to be done, says Grothe, involves yourself. "Get your spouse or your friends to tell you whether you're good partner material," he says--that is, examine your own potential strengths and weaknesses.
