Our leadership team gets along great, but we struggle with execution because everyone shares the same intuitive problem-solving style. How do we use conative mapping to deliberately diversify our leadership team's operational strengths?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a common issue known as conative cloning. Founders naturally hire people who solve problems the same way they do, which often leads to a leadership team that is highly aligned personally but operationally dysfunctional. For example, if your team is packed with high Quick Starts, you will have endless ideas, constant pivots, and very few finished projects.

Understanding Your Team's Conative Gaps

To fix this, you must use the Kolbe A Index to map out the collective conative strengths of your team. This will visually expose your systematic gaps. Kolbe identifies four Action Modes, which describe how people naturally take action:

• Fact Finder: How you gather and share information.
• Follow Thru: How you organize and structure.
• Quick Start: How you deal with risk and uncertainty.
• Implementor: How you handle space and tangibles.

By understanding these natural inclinations, you can see where your team collectively excels and where it might be lacking in crucial areas, such as detailed follow-through or methodical process building. You can also analyze these profiles to understand [why certain team members might be in conflict](/qa/kolbe-sales-operations-conflict-handoffs).

Restructuring for Balance

To restructure, you do not necessarily need to fire your entire team. Start by looking at your current [Accountability Chart](/qa/resolving-accountability-chart-seat-overlaps).

Here's how to begin optimizing your team:

• Align Roles with Strengths: You may have a high Follow Thru person trapped in a creative seat, or a high Quick Start trying to run finance or operations. Align people so their natural Action Modes match their daily responsibilities. This can significantly reduce stress and improve performance for individuals who might otherwise be experiencing [conative stress](/qa/promoted-employee-burnout-conative-stress) in misaligned roles.
• Strategic Hiring: If you still have a massive gap in a specific area, like Follow Thru, you must make a conscious decision to hire for this specific trait in your next leadership role. When writing the job description and interviewing, target candidates who excel at creating order, documenting processes, and establishing routine.
• Assign Rocks Strategically: During your EOS® Quarterly Pulsing™ sessions, use your mapped conative data to assign Rocks (90-day priorities) to the people best suited to execute them. A person with high Follow Thru will naturally excel at driving a project to completion, while a high Quick Start might be better suited to exploring new market opportunities.
• Cross-Functional Projects: For major operational shifts or complex projects, use your conative profiles to build [more effective project teams](/qa/analyze-kolbe-indexes-with-ai-project-teams) by ensuring a mix of strengths.

By balancing your team with both innovators and system-builders, you turn creative chaos into a scalable, repeatable business model. This strategic approach to team building ensures that all necessary operational strengths are present and effectively utilized, leading to improved execution and sustainable growth.

Related questions

• [How do we use the Kolbe A Index to diagnose why our Sales and Operations heads are constantly in conflict over project handoffs?](/qa/kolbe-sales-operations-conflict-handoffs)
• [Our Head of Customer Success is a great culture fit and passes the gets it and wants it tests, but her Kolbe score shows she has a very low Follow Thru and high Quick Start. She keeps starting new client retention initiatives but never completes them. Is this a GWC capacity issue, or can we solve this by restructuring her seat?](/qa/head-customer-success-low-follow-thru-kolbe)
• [One of our top performers was promoted to a managerial seat but is now burning out. How do we check if they have conative stress?](/qa/promoted-employee-burnout-conative-stress)
• [I am currently sitting in four seats on our Accountability Chart, and I am completely burnt out, but we do not have the cash flow to hire four external replacements. How do I use my conative profile to determine which of these four seats I must delegate first to survive?](/qa/how-to-delegate-four-seats-using-kolbe)
• [I have a visionary leader who wants to automate everything with AI tomorrow, but my Integrator is a high Fact Finder who is stalling the roll-out. How do we use conative profiles to get our AI strategy back on track?](/qa/kolbe-profiles-ai-visionary-integrator)