Talk.
Dysfunctional co-founders don’t talk. Not for real. They stew. They get passive-aggressive. They email. They Slack. But they don’t talk.
I don’t mean talk in group settings, or at staff meetings, or in scrum. I mean the two of you.
My best co-founder relationship, in my first start-up, we got together every single day. Every day at 6pm. For 10, 15, 20 minutes. With no agenda. Just to talk. About our day, our challenges, our worries. In fact, it was always a highlight of my day.
And one lunch each week, with no agenda. Just to talk. We ate lunch at a gas station nearby. The where part didn’t matter. 🙂
My dysfunctional co-founder relationships … we didn’t talk. Or we did for a while, and then it fell apart.
Once this happens, it’s unrecoverable. The relationship is forever broken.
But until then, you can fix it.
At least try.
