The Partnership Charter: How to Start Out Right with Your New Business Partnership (or Fix the One You're In)

This is a top-notch book - nicely written, smartly organized, and easy to follow and understand. It provides insightful information, telling case histories, useful checklists and exercises, and even includes a fully developed "Partnership Charter" in the appendix. Author David Gage offers an inside view of partnerships, and his case studies make the text a pleasure to read. More importantly, he shows you how to create a partnership charter that will function as your enterprise's Magna Carta in the years to come. If you are planning a partnership, we advise you to study this expert presentation first. You will save yourself a lot of trouble.

I am a management consultant that helps companies with growth, and work with 3 partners in my firm. We developed a partnership agreement, but, as the company has developed, it has lacked depth in thinking through how we continue to work together as circumstances have changed. Gage's book provides a structure and process by which this would not happen -- i.e., partners have a better discussion at the start of the partnership (or whenever it is needed/wanted -- we'll be having one soon) that enables them to better plan for what might happen and create a framework for bringing these issues up when they need to be discussed. This is a terrific book because it provides background and context, as well as practical, actionable advice. And it is useful for people considering, in, or dissolving a partnership.

As a business advisor I'm constantly looking for tools to help my clients, and this is the best one I've found for partnerships. Gage's book explains how to defuse potentially explosive issues by detecting them in advance using a positive and creative process. While the underlying concepts make perfect sense --- addressing compatibility, on multiple levels, before there's a crisis --- what really impressed me was the practical, systematic approach to identifying and working on these issues. The author's depth of experience and expertise is made easily accessible by his clear, jargon-free style of writing. Not a panacea --- these are realistic suggestions that require commitment and work --- but worth the effort if you want to improve the chances for a successful partnership.

I came across this book in the small business section of the library, and once I had read it, decided I needed to purchase a copy for my permanent collection. I have been through the partnership anguish described in the book, and I wish I'd found the book earlier because I think my partner and I may have had a chance at working things out had we followed Gage's advice. Moreover, I am writing a book on women and small business, including a section about how natural and helpful it is to take on a business partner. I plan to refer to and recommend Gage's book in my own. The Partnership Charter is insightful, useful, and well-written. In a very professional way, Gage tackles one of the most vexing challenges of small businesses: they are personality-driven. I won't pretend that implementation of his advice is easy, but at least you'll have a roadmap that helps you and your partner to reduce the risks, get to know each other better, and give it your collective best shot.

I read The Partnership Charter as I was about to enter into a partnership to start a business requiring large amounts of startup capital which I had almost finished raising. Upon reading this great book, I realized that my partner was not the one to do this venture with and I pulled out at the last minute. I thank David and this book for saving me from a great deal of anguish and aggravation. Had I entered into this partnerhip, I would have ended up doing the lion's share of the work and would have had to break up the partnership.