ProAdvisorCoach’s proprietary MindScan™ Assessment is a powerful behavioral assessment tool based on the work of Nobel Nominee Robert Hartman. The MindScan is designed to measure an individual's value perception and decision-making. It evaluates three dimensions: Systemic (logical and structured thinking), Extrinsic (practical and tangible aspects), and Intrinsic (emotional and relational values). By assessing how individuals prioritize and perceive these dimensions, the MindScan identifies areas of bias (distorted value perceptions) and clarity (accurate value perceptions), revealing insights into personal development and potential for growth.
In this post, Coach Yuri Kruman delves into common founder mistakes and outlines how the ProAdvisorCoach MindScan™ Assessment can help build a foundation of self-awareness and strategic clarity.
Speed and noise kill. Not just pedestrians, but many startups, too.
Let me explain...
As a leadership coach and CHRO who has worked with, consulted, advised and mentored countless startup founders over the years, I’ve seen an ungodly amount of noise in the startup space and a hell of a lot of aimless speed, just for the sake of movement.
The mantra “move fast and break things” has produced an entire generation (or two) of founders fixated on speed and noise, at all costs. That is, at the expense of self-awareness and sound judgment in keeping top talent, not just attracting it.
According to the prevailing listicle and podcast wisdom, you must immediately fly off the cliff while building the wings, build a façade and ship a half-baked product, or else.
This often works surprisingly well, until the walls start crumbling, the (proverbial) rats scurry to leave the ship and, before the founder knows it, their “baby” has imploded.
I’ve seen it firsthand, especially with first-time founders without much life experience or time spent on developing themselves as humans, not just professionals.
The results are often not just cringe, but downright ugly—“bro” culture and groupthink, impulse hiring and firing, downright unethical and illegal behavior, and failing to apologize or course-correct.
- I consulted and coached one health tech founder who worked in his business with his wife, mother-in-law, and best friend... and they came with all the crazy drama and favoritism that goes with that. On top of a relentless work ethic, he had a martyr complex to boot, leading his wife to force him to step back from the business after they had two kids.
- A cookie company CEO I worked with was stuck spending more than half of his time on finance and HR, despite really being a brand manager. He had a basic inability to ask for help, delegate, or automate.
- Another first-time founder I worked with (we were friendly from college) was so tone-deaf and inhuman that he purposely prevented an employee he fired from getting unemployment, until his wife intervened. This same guy pretended to be religious just to get an investor check.
- An agency executive team I consulted in Medicare sales brought on several employees and contractors over the course of a month, then promptly fired them all four weeks later... without explanation!
- There are also the handful of founders and CEOs I've worked with that got rid of people on a whim and broke labor laws (and got sued, then lost).
And the list goes on and on.
All this makes poor product-market fit look positively pedestrian.
It's no wonder so many VCs require founders in whom they invest to get a coach—or three!—to help with the mental and physical overwhelment.
In our era where attention is the prevailing currency, attention is very rarely directed inward.
While those in the role of employee can often "skate by" until their inevitable mid-life crisis, the sheer speed and responsibility of being a founder (employing people, paying outsized bills, and holding together what’s often a glorified house of cards) are quickly forced to “figure it out” or step out of the ring.
Throw in a layer of generative AI and you have an oversized sense of false confidence that everything is holding together, or very nearly so.
Yet, the constant fires catch up.
But it isn’t a coding bug, or even a cash crunch, that keeps founders up at night. It’s the uncertainty of dealing with whole humans, who often act (seemingly) irrationally, get pissed over small things, pull their money, leave for other companies, and otherwise “upset the apple cart” or don’t just “fall in line.”
It might be too easy to blame founders for all these things, but the truth is, if startup bros preach “radical responsibility” or whatever else Goggins or Tony Robbins are preaching these days, why not extend it to a founder’s personal responsibility for what happens in his or her company?
And that’s where the rubber hits the road.
Whereas large funding rounds and good PR cover up many deep problems in startups... for a while. But the messy human reality always catches up.
When things go south, most founders blame customers, investors, the market, rogue employees, the office dog, anything and anyone but themselves... until the market, investors, employees, even the office dog, all turn that thinking on its head, and the founder finds themselves out of cash, out of good will, unceremoniously sacked, or left with a steaming pile, holding the proverbial bag.
So what can a founder do to minimize the chances of this awful (but all too common) progression?
Understand, there’s no magic wand, but there are definitely measures one can take to minimize the risk.
Before the obvious focus on “delegation, automation and outsourcing,” before anything else, there's work to be done for the founder who needs to gain a critical awareness of a self.
I'm not talking about doing ayahuasca, going on a mindfulness retreat, or taking a vacation, though each of those can help to some degree.
I'm talking about taking time to get to know yourself.
It can be as simple and slow as reading personal development books, doing daily meditation, going on regular walks, eating well, and sleeping enough.
Unfortunately, these are sadly seen as a “luxury” by most founders in the thick of building a business at a breakneck pace.
Only when investors, executive teams, or (occasionally) family and (rarely) friends “force the issue,” are founders forced to reckon with their inner demons, lack of self-knowledge, and the resulting toxicity they project on others (as all humans might do in the same situation). Except the stakes are much higher and the perceived room for error is dramatically smaller.
While most intelligent people realize that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” (thank you, Ben Franklin), very few actually integrate the principle into their lives in any meaningful sense.
So what do we mean when we say “self-awareness?" Not a personality test, although those can be helpful. I'm referring to understanding one’s behavior, which follow clear thinking patterns. And that's not necessarily an easy task when you consider that, according to a study conducted by Dr. Fred Luskin at Stanford University, an average person has approximately 65,000 thoughts a day!
My preferred method for helping founders and other execs figure out their thinking is the MindScan™ Assessment.
Based on the work of the Nobel-nominated pioneer in axiology Robert Hartman, the ProAdvisorCoach MindScan™ Assessment evaluates the internal and external aspects of the 3 dimensions of thinking as...
- Relater (Who Am I / My Being)
- Thinker (The Way It Should Be)
- Doer (What I’m Doing Now)
Most importantly, it evaluates our clarity and our bias in regards to...
- Self-Empathy (Relater/Internal)
- Empathy for Others (Relater/External)
- Practical Thinking (Thinker/Internal)
- Structural Thinking (Thinker/External)
- Role Awareness (Doer/Internal)
- Self-Direction (Doer/External)
With a deeper analysis of each, we can easily diagnose common "bad behavior" patterns, like...
- the visionary founder who ignores policies and procedures
- the COO with no empathy for others
- the CFO rated highly for structural and practical thinking, and even for empathy, but with low clarity on self-empathy
With a clear picture in place and a keen understanding of the areas of great clarity and balance (greatest strengths), and also those of lowest clarity and greatest bias (weaknesses), we can quickly create an action plan to address the weaknesses by using the strengths, define and plan for success using SMART goals, then create clear KPIs and drive results.
This can, in turn, be done with team members, or even entire companies, giving a founder or CEO unparalleled level of detail and—well... clarity—on the overall health of their individual employees’, teams’ and company’s performance, in real time.
As such, self-awareness goes from being a “luxury” reserved for some mythical class of others, to a massively valuable, indispensable asset for making business and personal decisions.
In short, the MindScan is a "operating system" for business. Among others that I've come across (like EOS™), the MindScan is the only one I've found that prioritizes diagnosing the thinking of the humans at the center of the company, rather than auditing various departments or functions.
When there is a clear system and everyone knows their role to play, mastery can be achieved, enabling speed to accelerate and elevate, rather than destroy, the company.
With that in place, all the noise in the world won’t distract the people involved from building something truly great!
Get a Free MindScan™ Assessment, Report, and Coaching Session ($500 Value)!
Get access to the actionable insights that the MindScan™ assessment delivers and receive a complimentary coaching session to review the results (a $500 value)!
Dive a Little Deeper into the MindScan™ Assessment!
We invite you to dive a little deeper into the power of the MindScan™ Assessment by reading the following recent posts:
- Big Insights & Small Shifts: A MindScan Profile
- Know Thyself... with Math to Measure Thinking!
- From Blindness to Brilliance: A MindScan Profile
- Beyond the Blind Spot: The MindScan Journey of ProAdvisorCoach Founder Rich Campe
About Coach Yuri Kruman
Yuri is a Forbes Coaches Council member and contributor to Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Fast Company. His acclaimed book “Be Your Own Commander-in-Chief” was recognized as a USA Today Top 20 Book for personal and professional growth. A sought-after speaker, Yuri has delivered keynotes at Google, Columbia University, and EY. Recognized among the Top 122 CHROs globally (PeopleHum) and Top 100 DEI Leaders (Mogul), Yuri’s mission is to empower organizations to align talent with purpose for sustainable growth.
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