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When Co-founders Fight — And What To Do About It

why cofounders fight
Being business partners is a lot like being married. When the relationship is thriving, it’s awesome. But when it isn’t, it really sucks. In fact, few things can destroy organizational momentum like two co-founders in a bad relationship. I have a friend in a successful business partnership who puts it like this, “I have two wives. One at home and one at work. I’ve got to invest time and energy to make sure that both stay happy, otherwise, it all goes to s#*&t!”

Not all partner conflict is bad. You actually want constructive conflict in your partnership. Constructive conflict means that you and your partner share the same vision and values; there’s give-and-take; you fiercely debate potential decisions but without attacking each other’s character; there’s a sense of mutual trust and respect; and your individual strengths and styles complement each other. You are both better because of the other.

Destructive conflict, on the other hand, is like a toxic marriage. It eats away at the system from the inside and doesn’t work for anybody. Just as divorcing adults impacts their kids, two co-founders in a toxic relationship impact everyone else in the organization.

If you’re navigating a bad business partnership, or you just want to make sure that your current great partnership remains so, then it can be eye-opening to understand that any destructive partnership conflict falls into just three types. Once you know what type of conflict you’re dealing with, then you can know how to address it.

As you read about each category of destructive conflict below, see if you can recognize where your partnership is experiencing the most strain today. That will tell you where to focus your energy and attention to help the partnership be great again, if that’s possible, or to walk away if it isn’t.

Category 1: Conflict of Vision and Values

I’m just going to come right out and say it. If you are having a true conflict of vision and values between you and your business partner, you only have one option: get a divorce. In this case a “divorce” means that one partner needs to effectively buy the other out or, if not, to shut the business down and go your separate ways.

Why? Because nothing is more destructive to organizational momentum and potential than a conflict of vision and values. Vision is the destination or ultimate outcome you want the business to reach. Values are expressed in the behavior you deem desirable and acceptable during the journey. If the co-founders no longer want to end up in the same location or don’t abide by the same core values, how can they possibly work effectively together? They simply can’t.

As an example, imagine a married couple in counseling. One partner desires to live in […]

By |2021-05-18T01:55:56-07:00June 3rd, 2014|Articles|Comments Off on When Co-founders Fight — And What To Do About It

About PSIU Assessments

PSIU Assessments:
Gain Quick, Practical Insights into Others & Self

If you manage people or projects, I don’t need to tell you that your job is challenging. You have finite time and energy each day to try to get the best from your direct reports and teams. You also need to make smart hiring decisions. So how do you do it?

If you’re an experienced manager, you already try to align people into roles that play to their strengths and passions. But if you’re honest, you’ll also admit that accomplishing this feat in an ever-changing work environment is easier said than done.

If I told you there was a simple, accurate, and cost-effective tool to better understand your staff and hire great talent, would you want to learn how?  If your answer is “Yes!” – like most of my CEO clients – then here’s something you’ll want to know about…

What I’m sharing with you is one of the most powerful breakthrough tools I’ve learned in my career as an entrepreneur and organizational coach. It’s the foundation for much of the work I do with my clients and I’ve seen it deliver amazing turnarounds over and over.

This breakthrough tool is called the PSIU Talent Management Suite – a suite of online style assessments and actionable reports that are faster, simpler, and more applicable to real-world business settings than traditional psychological tests.

The PSIU Talent Management suite gives you easy access to everything you need to assess the work styles of your current staff and teams – and then match them to the right roles where they can thrive.

You will boost team-wide productivity and job satisfaction, as well as address any gaps through specific and actionable steps. You will also master the process of making consistently great hires, easily identifying your candidates’ strengths, weaknesses, working style, blind spots, and more – so you can choose only the right talent for your organization.

What’s Wrong with Traditional Type Indicators?

Traditional style or type indicators, most of which were created mid-last-century, attempt to explain the psychological underpinnings of why a person behaves the way they do. While this may be a fascinating area of study and self-reflection, from a management perspective, who cares?

Think about it. Does it really help you to know if your VP of Sales is an INTJ or an ISFP Myers-Briggs Type? Can you even remember what those damn letters mean? From a management perspective, what you really want to know is whether your VP of Sales has a style match for what you need in the role now (this changes based on the lifecycle stage of your business and existing team dynamics) and if he or she is happy and productive in that role. If not, you want to know what to actually do about it.

Or, if you’re in the market to hire a new CFO and you […]

By |2023-09-25T06:56:17-07:00April 21st, 2014|Comments Off on About PSIU Assessments

A Scathing Portrait of the Innovator Leadership Style at AMD

When a Big Innovator is CEO, this leads to an up-and-down ride.Ars Technica published a great article this week “The rise and fall of AMD: How an underdog stuck it to Intel.”

The article follows the rise and fall of AMD over the years in its attempt to wrest a market leadership position from Intel (a war it was never able to win) and gives many anecdotes about the leadership style of the company founder and CEO Jerry Sanders. I want to share this article because it’s a good read and because it captures the essence of how a company behaves when a Big Innovator is at the helm.

As you might know if you’re familiar with my work, the Innovator style is one of four management styles that we all possess to some degree. You can read more about these styles (Producer, Stabilizer, Innovator, and Unifier) in Part II of my book Organizational Physics: The Science of Growing a Business.

Our best Innovator qualities are our ability to anticipate change and to be imaginative, charismatic, and inventive. Without the Innovator force, we would have no ability to adapt to changes in our environment and we would quickly become irrelevant or extinct.

When the Innovator force is really high, we call it a “Big Innovator” or “Big I.” The Big I shows up in some predictable and telling ways, and this description of Sanders is a perfect example:

On June 10, 2000, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) wanted to party—and party big. The company’s CEO, Jerry Sanders, arranged to rent out the entire San Jose Arena (now called the HP Pavilion) and then paid big bucks to bring in Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, the husband-and-wife country music superstars.

Employees “could bring anybody, your wife, your kids, your friends—it was big doings. There were celebrations, gifts and awards,” recalled Fran Barton, who served as AMD’s chief financial officer from 1998 to 2001. The boss even got in on the fun. “[Sanders] was on a high wire, he did a unicycle ride. It was totally Hollywood. He could really put on a show when he wanted to put on a show.”

And why not celebrate in style? AMD’s successful Athlon chips—Ars named the Athlon its “CPU of the Year” in 1999—had finally put the screws to archrival Intel, and in 2000 the company earned nearly $1 billion in profits.

By 2005, years of solid chip design and technological execution had the company walking with a swagger, as seen in marketing stunts which challenged Intel’s then-current server processors to a “dual-core duel.” Nowhere was this attitude more apparent than AMD’s 2005 lawsuit against Intel for anti-competitive business practices.

When a Big Innovator feels momentum, there is no greater joy to them than rallying people to […]

By |2021-05-18T02:08:07-07:00April 25th, 2013|Articles|Comments Off on A Scathing Portrait of the Innovator Leadership Style at AMD

A Beautiful Portrait of a Unifier Leader

Pacific Lutheran football coach Frosty Westering in his office in Tacoma, Wash. in 2001. (AP Images) Pacific Lutheran football coach Frosty Westering in his office in Tacoma, Wash. in 2001. (AP Images)

I came across a phenomenal obituary written for Frosty Westering by Chuck Culpepper at Sports on Earth today.

Frosty was the football coach for the Division III Pacific Lutheran football team and he was remarkable. He coached for over 32 seasons without a losing record in any. He never mentioned playoffs or titles to his players but won four national championships and four runner-up finishes on two levels. He died on Friday at age 85 surrounded by a loving family.

Tears welled up in my eyes and my throat got caught when I read it. I want to share this story about Frosty for that reason alone. But I also want to share it because it’s a wonderful portrait of a strong Unifier leadership style in action.

The Unifier style is one of four management style dimensions that we all possess to one degree or another. You can read more about these styles: Producer, Stabilizer, Innovator, and Unifier in Part II of my book Organizational Physics: The Science of Growing a Business.

Our best Unifier qualities are our ability to create rapport, understand and motivate others, build cohesive teams, and create sound organizational cultures based on caring, empathy, and loyalty. Without the Unifier force, we would have no ability to respond to change efficiently because the organization couldn’t act as a whole.

Let’s see how the Unifier force shows up in coach Frosty’s leadership style so that you can learn to recognize it, develop it, and manage it in your own life and work:

His players implored him to belly-flop into a California hotel pool, and he complied – at age 75. He once took a running plunge into the mud during a soppy game in Oregon. He adored when players pulled pranks on him, insisted players use his first name – Frosty! – and corrected them if they used “Coach.”

He sometimes halted practice to have players spend five minutes gazing beyond the giant evergreens to Mount Rainier. He sometimes halted practice to have players go to other sporting fields and cheer on, say, the soccer team. He always halted two-a-day practices in August and instructed players to go help freshmen move into dormitories.

He believed deeply in singing. His players sang before games, after games. Sometimes they sang to the mock direction of the coach’s cane. Always they learned to sing without embarrassment, for it had become uncool to refrain from the refrains. For his 300th win in September 2003, an offensive lineman led the team in James Taylor’s “Steamroller.” During warmups for the NCAA Division III national championship game […]

By |2021-05-18T02:09:40-07:00April 16th, 2013|Articles|Comments Off on A Beautiful Portrait of a Unifier Leader
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