Managing Healthy Conflict: Co-founder Conversations

In this conversation I talk with Jennifer Dennard and Dan Pupius, the co-founders of Range, software that helps teams be more connected, focused, and productive no matter where they’re working. Global teams at Twitter, New Relic, CircleCI, and more keep their teams in sync and connected with Range. Jen is the co-founder and COO. Prior to founding Range, Jen led Medium’s organizational development team. Jen has partnered and consulted with startups and multinational corporations on empowering autonomous and distributed teamwork. She lives in Colorado with her two cats and husband. Dan is co-founder and CEO of Range. Prior to Range, Dan was Head of Engineering at the publishing platform Medium. And before that he was a Staff Software engineer at Google, where he worked on Gmail, Google+, and a variety of frontend infrastructure. He has an MA in Industrial Design from Sheffield Hallam University and a BSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Manchester. In past lives he raced snowboards, jumped out of planes, and lived in the jungle. This is a fairly meta conversation (in the old sense of the word!) since we talked about how Dan and Jen structure their relationship and how they built their company…which is a company that builds software that structures relationships - specifically, effective teams. As Dan outlines, “Human behavior requires structure to facilitate it…in an organization, software provides a lot of architecture, which shapes our behavior, but we're (often) not intentional about that software. The whole theory of Range was… how can we build software that acts as architecture that shapes the behaviors that we believe to be present in effective teams?” My book Good Talk is built around the idea of a Conversation OS, or Operating System.  One element of the Conversation Operating System is error and repair. As Jen says in the opening quote, conflict and collisions will inevitably happen in relationships. Dan suggests that “if you have productive conflict or if you encourage productive conflict, there will be times when you step over the boundary and it's what you do then that is the important thing, in how you recover.” In other words, how you repair the error or breach in the relationship is often more important than the error itself. Many folks shy away from conflict, or hope it never happens. Planning for it and knowing it will happen is a fundamentally different stance, a more effective Error and Repair Operating System. I also love the “reasonable person principle” that Jen and Dan use in their relationship, as long as it never slides into gaslighting. We unpack a lot more great stuff, from uninstalling Holacracy at Medium to the importance of being journey-focused in entrepreneurship relationships, and the power of crafting explicit processes ahead of needing to use them. Dan and Jen are also big believers, like me, in the power of the “check-in''. For example, in my men’s group we share in 30 seconds how we're doing emotionally and physically at the start of every group. At Range, it can be as simple as a “green, yellow, red” check-in or as deep as going straight to the question “how are you…really?”  They suggest that baking human connection into each and every meeting is much much more effective than trying to isolate connection into one “vibes” meeting. As with many of my co-founder conversations, there is a common thread of clear roles along with an awareness of and respect for the Venn diagram of skills between the co-founders. Another common thread, as Dan says at the end of our conversation: looking after yourself and attending to yourself is key, because “if you're not in a good state, you can't be a good teammate and you definitely can't be a good leader.” Be sure to check out my other co-founder conversations. I discussed building an Integrity Culture with the co-founders of Huddle, Michale Saloio and Stephanie Golik, and investigated prototyping partnerships with Jane Portman and Benedikt Deicke, co-founders of Userlist.  You may also enjoy my interview with Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman, the co-authors of the 2015 bestseller, Wired to Create, where we unpack how they managed their working relationship. Paired creativity is a thing! And if you really want to dive deep into the idea of being a conscious co-founder, make sure to check out my conversation with my friend Doug Erwin, the Senior Vice President of Entrepreneurial Development at EDAWN, the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada. Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Links Range Lawrence Lessig’s Pathetic Dot theory Daniel Coyle’s Belonging Cues: Belonging cues are non-verbal signals that humans use to create safe connections in groups. The three basic qualities of belonging cues are 1) the energy invested in the exchange, 2) valuing individuals, and 3) signaling that the relationship will sustain in the future. Kegan’s Levels, specifically, Stage 4 — Self-Authoring mind Lead Time Chats