🎯 About This Template 🎯

Why Is Founder Alignment Important?

Most startups fail because they lack the necessary skills and alignment between each founding team member.

<aside> ☝ 65% of startups fail due to interpersonal conflicts within the founding team. (Source: Harvard Business School professor, Noam Wasserman)

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What is the Goal?

The following workshop was designed to get clarity around the followings aspects:

• Understand the personality types in the founding team
• The individual and collective skills and passions of the founding team
• Potential gaps in the skills and passions
• Alignment on timing and commitments to start a company (optional obviously if you have already started and everyone is fully committed, i.e. founders work full-time already)
• Potential role of each founding team member
• Align and identify gaps in operating values

How does it work?

Ideally, you decide on a facilitator who guides you through the exercises. The workshop takes about 90-120 minutes to complete.

Instructions for preparation are given in italics.

There is a summary at the end where you can collect your findings.

1. Exercise: Kickoff with results of personality test

Fill in the 16 personalities test before your session and send your results to the facilitator. Read up the description of your personality type and write down which descriptions match your view and which don’t.

In order to kick the session off we will try to guess each team member's personality type and discuss what matches your personality type and what does not. The test is a model, so there is never a 100% fit.

Source: https://www.16personalities.com/personality-types

2. Exercise: Identifying the skills and passion of each team member

The IKIGAI framework helps gain clarity on the reason for being on a personal level. This can also be used to align a founding team around their skills and passion. The circles around “what you can get paid for” or “what the world needs” are part of the founding team’s startup idea. For this workshop, the focus lies on the two other dimensions “what you love” and “what you are good at”. Having clarity around these dimensions helps to identify gaps and overlaps in the founding team.

IKIGAI Framework, Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrismyers/2018/02/23/how-to-find-your-ikigai-and-transform-your-outlook-on-life-and-business/?sh=2c7f198b2ed4

During the workshop, you will discuss the followings questions:

1. What skills and roles are needed to build your startup idea independent of the current founding team? Which skills are of strategic importance?
2. What skills do founding team members bring (good at, not good at) and passions (love doing, don’t love doing)? See the IKIGAI framework.
3. What are potential gaps in regard to skills and passion? How can they be closed?

Please think about your answers to questions 1, 2, and 3 before the workshop.

3. Exercise: Alignment on timing and commitments

As you now have clarity about each team member’s skills and passion, let’s focus on commitment.

Usually, different founding team members are in different stages of their life and have different financial resources available. E.g. Someone has a family while others don’t. Therefore, it is crucial to have alignment on each other's expectations and commitments. In this exercise the goal is to get clarity on the following aspects: