Ask HN: Texts to share with my co-founder re time-management and teamwork?
tldr; Looking for articles or books about teamwork and time-management between founders in a startup environment to share with my co-founder who has never worked in a team or in any structured job in his life.
The business is physical business with production facilities, that exists for 6-7 years. During this time it hasn't grown but has always supported its owner financially. I've always helped a little bit with communication and marketing but not too much because there was lack of execution on the other side. Last year we agreed that together we can make this thing grow and I joined as partner.
His profile: for his whole life he was always a business owner, mostly in production and printing. Loves making things with his hands, hobbyist woodworker. Not very digital - has a smartphone but you can't get him on a team discord for example. Lacks any organisation skills which is always compensated by the people he hires.
My profile: 17 years of digital communications & martech. Worked in corporations, NGOs and startups. Started & failed a few businesses, always with a partner, never alone.
The issue that I have is that my work experience makes me expect certain things to be true - that we all have a common agreement on how things work, how we manage our time and mutual tasks, how we sync priorities and so on. And in this case I am always hitting a stone. My first reactions were a little bit patronising, where I go into "explain management" mode and although I am getting some things through I feel that it is not an effective method cause it is slow and also external for him, leaving the agency and responsibility to me.
So I am looking for something that would describe the co-founder dynamics, co-management, syncing, time-management and so on. I want to just give it to him as a recommended read and then we will have some basis on which to build and discuss, an external authority and structure of things, that is better than my own experience.
(Edit: the intention of giving a text is establishing a common ground of basic terminology and knowledge on the topic/s over which then we can have conversations and sync our intentions. My problem until now hasn't been so much total denial for cooperation but more of a lack of common language to facilitate this.
So, no - giving him something to read would not be accepted as patronising, he would gladly accept. The alternative is long lectures from me and I don't think I am so well prepared or structured.) 1. You are not a founder. A founder is there at the beginning...when the company is founded. You are a business partner. It's a very different dynamic. The business is a machine in your eyes and a child in your partner's. 2. Are you sure your partner actually wants the business the grow? Sounds to me like you are treating a lifestyle business like a corporation. You are swimming against the tide. I would hire somebody else who can deliver in the way you expect them to and let your partner keep doing what he's doing at his pace. Build the business around him. Or...you know...stop wasting your time trying to scale a lifestyle business. 1. Technically - yes. Although if we go to discuss this further we would go over this technicality.
2. That was clearly stated and discussed in depth in the beginning when I was joining. And yes - I am treating a lifestyle business as a growth potential business and that's what was clearly agreed from the beginning. He is having some difficulties with transitioning from this and thus I am trying to help him, not break him. On point 1, just expect to have this conversation pretty frequently. It is not a technicality. If you tell people that you are a startup founder and it comes out that you're recently taking on partner level responsibilities of a 7 year old company, they're very likely to see these things as in conflict. You said you've "always helped a bit". If by "always" you mean since year 0, that's at least a little more compelling. It is something that I have on top of my mind but even for the technicalities:
- we are moving things to a brand new company now
- there will be a new brand soon, old one would be left just for the domestic market (a very small percentage of expected sales)
- working on new products, 80% of old ones would gradually be stopped So I guess we are joining forces to create something new but in a step by step way so we can make bootstrapping it easier. Oh yeah, that's very different. That sounds a lot like founding and I didn't get it from your original post. May help to talk in terms of "refounding". You are assuming he will go to the trouble of reading these texts because somehow being given textbooks about how to work with other people is less patronizing? As gently as I can, I want to suggest that this might not be a realistic expectation. You don’t go into a lot of detail except to say that you hit a stone. The first thing that comes to mind is that he is literally stonewalling you — this is a term that describes a dysfunctional emotional tactic in relationships. I don’t think you have a knowledge problem. You have an emotional and relationship problem, which is far more complex, and requires different tools and skills. For some people, for example, they shut down (and stonewall) when the task at hand or the area under discussion overwhelms them, or makes them feel inadequate, or mirrors something from their childhood, or or or — the possibilities are literally endless. I’m going to assume you didn’t sign up to be this guy’s therapist. But if he’s not meeting you halfway in trying to engage with these issues, even by just acknowledging that these are issues, you have to find some way to speak to that. I’m hoping other people have more specific advice for this situation, because my advice would be not to go into business with someone who doesn’t have the emotional regulation skills to handle failure with growth. (And stonewalling is absolute a sign of a lack of regulatory and relationship skills.) but correctly identifying the problem is probably the first step. The stone that I hit is mostly based on different backgrounds - for example for him the concept of divorcing time from money comes in the beginning of the business, as business and life are not two separate things in his life.
Having said this - he is willing to learn, but I am not the best teach that can lay so much foundations. > I am not the best teach that can lay so much foundations. To echo a point from my other comment, if there is so much in terms of foundations that is missing, do you think maybe you should be reconsidering whether this person is the right cofounder for you? I think of it the same as with love - every morning you have to ask yourself if you still want to be with this person.
In the business case - I always have it in my mind to evaluate such an option and for now I think - yes. No, that's like giving your wife a book on weight loss, the onus is on you to triple the sales and then the hobbyist starts wondering how his going to get that done. I think it is more like him giving me the book The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt (which was great and opened my eyes a lot) and me returning the gesture.
On the other thing - I've just 2.5x-ed the sales now but we are working out together how to scale production. So I am looking on ways to optimise our relationship. The Goal is a book that influenced me over 25 years ago. The concepts are sound but i have gifted it to over 20 people since and a handful get it for what it is. However it isn’t a book about business and more a story about complexity and constraints applied to a theoretical business. I have never had occasions where there is an aha moment about a business i am in that literally is explained in The Goal. It seems to me you have the makings of a good partnership and i have read your comments and it does look like you are committed. In my opinion you could shift to looking at how your customers view your business and working backwards. It might be that your answers are to be less self obsessed and more customer obsessed. Not saying you are not doing this already but in my view the hierarchy for a business prioritises the customer first and works backwards. Issues in your partnership can then be weighed against this mission. Good luck. The Goal was very eye-opening to me since before that I've always have worked only on the side of business where I give my best to sell as much as possible and never cared about how are we then going to deliver this, handle the peaks that I create or the lows when I fail. In this context for me it was the fundamentals that I needed to have in order to have meaningful conversations about capacities, production bottle-necks and optimisation without making the conversation a tutoring session for me. Sounds like a personality conflict to me, and you're using the techniques that would work on you (textbooks) to try to adjust his behaviour. That's not a healthy dynamic; you'd be better off trying to empathise with the guy and understand his perspective. Why isn't he enthusiastic to do what you want to do? Seems like he's dragging his heels and giving him information on time management isn't going to change his level of motivation. If you understood why he is not motivated then you could try to help address it. Your post is a bit vague so I can't tell where the issue really is. However, I disagree with the posts suggesting all the ways to force change. Instead I'd suggest that you consider whether the things he's doing aren't "wrong" but just aren't your preference. For instance, perhaps he works 11-5 and you disagree and want him to do 9-5. He isn't wrong. You say he doesn't want to use Discord. That's not wrong, it's your preference. Lots of companies use other tools. Perhaps you could learn to use whatever it is that he uses. You say you want a common way to manage your priorities. Is that necessary? Why not just agree on the current goal and trust him to take care of his part? After all you did say that he's at least relatively successful. And you did decide that you wanted to partner with him so you do see value in the company and at least some in him too. Furthermore, it might even be great if you were the one to provide all the structure needed for the rest of the company that would give him the flexibility to do what he's good at. It'd be a great strength if you were able to work together separately. Forcing change is difficult. Since you are partners even more so. There's only so much change capital you can expend so it's better to use it on the truly important things. Hope you don't mind my frank opinion, but there are a lot of yellow (ostensibly red) flags in your post that give me cause for concern. You ask for a text to share with your co-founder regarding time-management and teamwork, but that presupposes that your cofounders weak spots can be ameliorated by him simply reading and applying lessons from a textbook. I think this is optimistic, to put it lightly. As you have stated, your co-founder doesn't have much experience working in a structured corporate setting where teamwork, clean communication, planning and scheduling is expected and required. He has been a small business owner, and so he has specialized on the skills to do that. Now, it's possible that he can grow beyond that, but it's equally possible that he can't, or won't. You don't have any evidence of his capability to break away from doing what he's been doing for a very long time, and indeed, he doesn't seem to be interested in it (you can't get him on a team discord). So that leaves you with a couple options: 1) Explain to him how what he's doing limits the business and determine whether he can be coached through his limitations. You can't just ask him. You have to provide an actual task which tests his ability to do this and gives you a concrete outcome/data point one way or another. 2) If he cannot be coached through his limitations (lack of ability or desire), determine if you can hire a report or team of reports which he can guide and which will be the glue that connects him to the team and the rest of the organization. This is an expensive and bureaucratic way to solve the problem, but if he adds enough value to the organization, it's probably the most practical solution to your problem. 3) If he cannot be coached through his limitations and it is not ROI positive to hire a team around him, you have to seriously consider whether you should separate. This may not be what you want to hear, but you have to consider this possibility. It is a common way that cofounder relationships end. In the future, it's important to test for these kinds of incompatibilities upfront -- if you can do some kind of a small projecting or contract with someone else to test the working relationship prior to committing to essentially a business marriage, you'll be a lot more prepared to underwrite the risk of working with this other person. Best of luck. These are mine lines of thought as well, although I feel positive (non-rationally, I guess) about how this can develop in the future.
There is just this step of the way where I want to establish a common vocabulary and structure on which we can then build. I've already seen in conversations the will for that and there is a precedent in the opposite direction with some books about manufacturing - The Goal and The Toyota Way - which was very constructive to how we talk about things. Like others, I agree this is not a facts problem. This is a relationship problem. You should find a therapist with business experience or an executive coach. Commit to going weekly for at least 6 month. From the way you describe it though, it sounds like his approach life has always worked for him. People rarely change in that situation. So in your shoes I'd be asking myself a) whether according to his values and desires he's sufficiently motivated to make a deep personal change, and b) if not, what relationship structure would work for everybody? As an example of the latter, if he's not emotionally ready for business partnership, is their a relationship that lets him generate value without messing up the wider system? E.g., what if you were the 51% owner and CEO, with him being Founder and Chief Scientist or some other title that implies prestige but no executive authority? Then you give him an assistant and a series of things to get done so that he can be happy and productive, but he can't actually block the kind of structure you need to run a business at scale. > So, no - giving him something to read would not be accepted as patronising, he would gladly accept. The alternative is long lectures from me and I don't think I am so well prepared or structured. I'm skeptical that either of the solutions you've settled on are the right ones - both, for me feel a bit broadcast mode. When I read your post I worry about the level of trust and psychological safety between you both, so thats what I'd be working on. I think you'd be better served having open two-way chats about work; sharing fears, hopes and dreams as a start. I get its not always neat determining how things start - as others have said there are a few smells there. To be blunt - its unclear to me if the other person in the relationship will 100% see it the same way as you do in the partner vs co-founder thing. You think there is a problem with terminology, but think he's got the same definition of co-founder as you? I'm skeptical - but only you can truly appraise what type of relationship you have and if the distinction really matters to you. It doesn't really matter for me to count myself as a co-founder of what we have in our hands now.
I used this term mostly since the growth stage co-founder dynamics are what we need to work on now and wanted to frame my question with it. You picked a cofounder who has never worked on a team or had a structured job in his life? He’s unwilling to install Discord to communicate with the team but you expect him to read and absorb time management and teamwork books? Sorry for the snark but what the heck are you thinking ... sounds like you have an intern, not a business partner. I disagree with the intern notion. Maybe he has a mentor, (the founder I successful sofar) and should try to learn some things, and then develop a new joint approach. You don’t need a book; you need to find one tiny example/experiment where putting in place a simple, visual information system will make things better according to them. Then, build from there. You’re not going to get him to make a large change to, from his perspective, accommodate your need for structure. Get a small whiteboard and make some kind of magnetic status system for jobs or whatever. Nothing that uses a single transistor or has a manual to explain it. That has come up in my mind and it makes sense. My biggest concern on this one is that it makes task management my responsibility, which at the end means that I have to go after him if he doesn't follow his deadlines for example. And I don't want to have this dynamic, at least in this way. Find a time just after poor communication led to confusion led to a bad customer outcome. It’s easier to get people to take pain killers than vitamins. Got it. I had some aversion to being reactive but I see how this can be beneficial. It sounds like you would both benefit from reading The E-Myth Revisited. I posted some notes online about this book: https://www.briansnotes.io/book/the-e-myth-revisited/ But I wouldn't recommend just sending someone a book or article to read. You need to approach this situation with more empathy. Hmm I think this big focus on management without having gotten results first would be a red flag for the other founder. I'd say grow the business first, then you'll have more credibility in managing things the way you'd like to. Already on it - 2.5x growth for now, and a lot more in the oven.
I think that's the right moment for building this foundations, cause in a month or two we expect to be growing even faster and it would be good if we have a common language for this layer of things. I would look at the Rockefeller Habits and the One Page Strategic Plan method. Put it up physically in the office, and make a daily and weekly review together, then someone (you) can share it digitally with everyone else. Reviewing the OPSP now, thanks! Looks like something that we can go through together (even once) and get big benefits from the discussions and decisions it poses. _Deep Work_, Cal Newport. Thanks!
Will read that one myself first :)