This is how we work with an owner-led team. From four individual profiles, via a shared workshop, to a clear picture of where the team is strong - and what's missing for it to become whole.
The example below is based on a real engagement. Names, titles and details are fictionalized to protect the client's identity.
Much of how the company works today still rests on a model a previous owner built - not something the team put together from scratch. It doesn't show in everyday work: everything functions, customers are happy, deliveries hold. It shows somewhere else - in the absence of their own, clear goal picture. There is a vision, to be the best and to create change, but no concrete answer to where they're actually heading, how they'll know they've succeeded, or what success means specifically for them.
At the same time the situation is almost ideal. A larger contract on the way in and operations in several locations mean the company will grow and recruit. Understanding what the team already has - and what it actually lacks - before hiring is the difference between recruiting on gut feeling and recruiting against a concrete, motivated gap. Done now, they avoid discovering the same gap a year from now, when the wrong competence is already in place.
The first step is therefore not to reorganize. It's to stop and ask: "If you built this company today, based on your own drivers and your own knowledge - how would you build it then?"
It all starts with a shared day. Then we work both individually and together:
Morning together: goals, current state, what you need to succeed as a team. Afternoon: individual conversations, one on one.
Two sessions, you and me. Your own complete profile takes shape - compass, superpower, kryptonite, honey and everything that belongs to it.
All profiles are laid on top of each other. We build roles, responsibilities and a concrete action plan together.
Per person: about 5 hours individually - 1 hour in the kickoff conversation, plus about 4 hours of Hero Profile across two sessions.
Together: 3 days total - 1 at the start (the shared kickoff) and 2 at the end (workshop and action plan).
Each person on the team gets their own complete Hero Profile™: compass, superpower, kryptonite, honey, Robin, Joker, communication and leadership. Click a card to see a full example.
"You steer people in the same direction - now the question is whether you dare to let go of what you carry alone."
See the full profile →"You see the opportunity and set it in motion - now the question is whether the foundation rests in you, not in others' validation."
See the full profile →"You see what others need before they say it - now the question is when you let someone see the same in you."
See the full profile →"You get people to want to join - now the question is whether you step forward as the one who drives, not just the one who holds it together."
See the full profile →Two days together. The first day sets the direction - business goals, everyone's why, the goalpost. The second day we lay the profiles on top of each other and build the organization around them: roles, responsibilities and an action plan.
Where are we going, concretely - and how do we know we've succeeded?
What does this particular goal give you, personally?
Everyone presents their Hero Profile to the others.
Who owns what, who is sidekick, what we complement with going forward.
What follows is what the compilation shows - where the team has coverage, where there are gaps, where the same word means different things, and where two people's strengths clash or complement each other.
None of the four compass words has Courage as its primary word. It doesn't show in everyday work - both Jonas and Anton act courageously when needed - but neither has confrontation or the uncomfortable decisions as their own core driver.
Jonas is the sole carrier of Quality as a core value. If he's away or overloaded, there's no natural backup for that function.
All four get energy from developing and thinking new - none from administration or follow-up. That work gets done anyway, but as duty rather than drive. Exactly the kind of pattern that's easy to miss until it already costs.
Trust is the most shared word in the team - three of four (Anton, Simon and Elin) carry it as one of their primary compass words. Jonas doesn't. Dig into the story behind the word for the three, and it turns out to mean almost entirely different things.
An inner buffer independent of external validation - building a self-trust that holds even without someone else confirming he succeeded.
Trust in himself and in the process - that it holds even when a customer gives negative feedback or something doesn't go as planned.
Relationships where trust is given or taken from her - the arena where her ideas do or don't get traction.
Why it matters: Three entirely different things that happen to share a word. If the team talks about "building trust" without putting words to the difference, everyone hears their own definition and thinks they're already talking about the same thing.
Communication styles - four clearly different needs:
Wants to understand why, not just what. Wants confidence in his analysis, not just his result.
Visual, direct but clear. Thinks it through before he bounces it - responsive once it's on the table.
Clear frames and time to think. "Yes, I'll fix it" needs to become "I'll get back to you".
A live meeting, face to face. Information without room for dialogue lands worse.
A pattern worth noting: Simon and Jonas actually share the same basic need - time to think before answering. It doesn't grate there. It grates instead when Anton's ideas, which come fast and fully formed, meet either of them before they've had that time.
Anton sets direction, structures, pushes. Simon delivers, understands the recipient, helps the idea land. Anton can give Simon exactly the leadership he thrives on: "I believe in you, here's the frame, go."
The risk: Anton stressed → more dominant and hard → Simon anxious → says yes instead of pushing back → takes on more → becomes even more stressed → Anton feels he needs to steer even more. A spiral that can reinforce itself if no one recognizes the pattern in the moment.
Anton today experiences Jonas as a joker - critical, questioning. But turned right, it's exactly the complement Anton lacks: Anton sees the opportunity, Jonas sees the risk.
The way there: If Anton thinks the idea through, gives Jonas time and asks openly "what do you see that I don't?" - Jonas's critical eye becomes quality assurance instead of an obstacle.
Elin could be the safe, coaching voice in Simon's Robin. The profiles point that way, but it's not something the team has confirmed yet - exactly the kind of question the workshop exists to test in the room, rather than settling in advance.
Through the work, the four have learned how they need to communicate with each other for a message to actually land right - with each person, not just in the moment it's said. The recommendation: be extra clear until this way of working sticks. Confirm that the message landed right, even when giving feedback to each other. Better to ask one time too many than one too few.
Pick two people from the team and see how their profiles meet - shared compass words, complementary strengths, and what we know (or don't yet know) about how they specifically work together.
A recommendation for who owns what, built on strengths, drivers and what already works. Responsibility ≠ doing everything yourself - the owner is responsible for making it happen and for bringing the right people in.
Long-term direction, weighing core business against knowledge center, decisive choices. Shared responsibility rather than a single owner.
Understanding and meeting the customer's reality, building trust, the advisory relationship. Matches Simon's superpower head-on.
That the delivery actually gets carried out and lands with the customer - Simon's core competence, with Anton's expert content brought in as needed.
New concepts, research, knowledge-center development. Jonas as quality assurance and risk lens, not a brake.
Budget ownership and follow-up. Jonas keeps ownership - but never alone. See the recommendation below.
Ongoing operations, documentation, processes. A candidate for automation/external help rather than growing internally.
How the company appears outward and how messages are packaged. Elin as the hub, Simon as the one who knows how it lands with the recipient.
Quality assurance and follow-up of actual impact with the end customer. Matches Jonas's compass word Quality directly.
Jonas keeps ownership - it matches his compass word Quality, and carrying responsibility for things being done right genuinely drives him. But with Elin as a permanent sidekick, it never becomes his to carry alone. The shared security lets him lift his gaze and spend more time on what actually charges him.
The point isn't to move ownership away from Jonas, but to make it something he never carries alone.
The same principle applied to four recurring types of work - who naturally owns, who is closest support, and which superpowers need to be brought in even if they don't own the project.
Do you see the same patterns in your own team? The first conversation is always free.
Book a first conversationAfter the workshop we took a step deeper: what does success mean for each person personally, and what does it take to get there together? It gave an unexpectedly strong shared foundation.
Four separate conversations about what success means for each of them - not for the company, for themselves. The pattern was striking: no one talked about exit or company value. Everyone measured success in depth - what difference the work actually makes for the end customer, not the number of employees or courses. That insight became the foundation for everything that followed.
With that foundation in place, we could build a shared goal picture - not three separate business areas, but three engines driving the same thing: greater impact for the end customer.
The bread and butter and the test bed - finances the rest, but the role changes: fewer, sharper deliveries rather than a big volume focus.
The shift from delivering for the customer to helping the customer achieve the change themselves - longer, deeper collaborations.
What the company owns: its own methodology, research and digital know-how that can scale without the organization needing to grow in headcount.
A simple resource-allocation exercise made it uncomfortably visible: the core business took around 80% of the time today. The question became not whether it should be deprioritized, but how deliberately they wanted to create room for the other two.
The plan also needed a rhythm to hold in everyday work, not just on paper:
Challenges are always raised together with a suggested improvement - never just the problem.
Protected time to think freely around the two new engines, disconnected from the operational everyday.
Deliberately building evidence for what actually succeeded - to strengthen trust rather than dwelling on individual misses.
Who holds it: During the most intense period, Elin takes the lead on structuring the activity plan, so that all four can jointly establish it step by step. Not to own the decisions - but to make sure the plan actually moves forward.
This is what the analysis has already given - before a single change in the organization has been made. Insights the team can use directly: how they divide responsibility, and what to look for in the next hire.
Two vulnerable core values identified (Quality, Courage) - Quality carried by a single person, Courage by no one at all. Invisible without the compilation, obvious with it.
A recommendation on who owns what - including that a person can keep ownership of an area but never carry it alone, rather than automatically moving the responsibility to someone else.
Not "we need someone good" but a specific, motivated requirement: which compass words, which function, and just as important - what the next person expressly should not be.
Compass-wise: Quality and/or Courage as primary words - genuine drive, not a sense of duty. Someone who gets energy from going deep into details and saying uncomfortable things straight out. A signal to weigh in, not a verdict.
What is absolutely not needed: Yet another person whose energy comes from developing and seeing opportunities. There's already plenty of that. The next person should make the team whole, not reinforce what already exists in abundance.
Most important first: see the plan before recruiting. The form - temporary, external or permanent - depends on the phase: early and uncertain argues for temporary, a lasting need argues for a permanent role. Examples tied to the three engines:
Pure delivery resource, so that more of the team's own time is freed up for competence partner and knowledge center.
Support in building structure and developing the new business areas in practice.
Leadership knowledge about organizational development as the team grows and roles are set.
Experience of building partnerships with larger players - for the competence-partner track.
Leadership knowledge in communication - how to address and meet customers at the right level.
Possible specialist competence (the industry's MVPs) when building the knowledge center - temporary initially, permanent if the need proves lasting.
This is what's on the table when we're done - tools the team owns and can go back to, not a report that ends up in a drawer.
One per person, in web and PDF: compass, superpower, kryptonite, honey, Robin, Joker, communication and leadership. Each gets their own picture of themselves, in black and white.
The team's combined picture: coverage, gaps, clashes and complements, role division - and the interactive comparison tool you tried above.
Everyone's drivers gathered into one shared direction no one had to compromise into being - the foundation you build the business plan on.
To take straight into your own planning: goals per focus area and a resource allocation to fill in yourselves. You don't just leave with insights, but with a tool.
A simple template to fill in together: one measurable goal per focus area, plus a resource allocation to deliberately shift over time. The example text is a starting point - the team fills in their own answer. A simplified excerpt:
| Focus area | Today | In 3 years |
|---|---|---|
| The core business | ~80% | 40% |
| Partnership | ~10% | 35% |
| Knowledge center | ~10% | 25% |
Everything is gathered in a final compilation the team owns - a place to go back to when everyday life takes over.
The same process, but on your team. The first conversation is always free.
Book a first conversation