Building a Founding Team

You should find and build your team of co-founders as quickly as possible. As long as you’re holding this alone, it’s subject to the limitations of what one person can do. Your Agile Learning Center becomes a vibrant reality when a team is sharing the vision, doing the work, and speaking to their friends, family and community about it.

You want to partner with people who look at the Agile Tree (Soil, Roots, Branches, & Leaves) and feel like it expresses their personal commitment to children and education. You want people who will actively and consistently work with you and keep their promises to get things done.

What will these founders look like?

They will read about the Agile Tree (Soil, Roots, Branches, & Leaves) and feel a strong connection to the goals it represents for education.

They'll have the time and energy to volunteer for work and keep their commitments.

They are people you can trust, talk to clearly, and even disagree with sometimes. There will be challenging and uncomfortable moments ahead. Your team needs to be upfront about handling communication issues.

If they are not actually working to launch the school, then they are not part of the founding team.

It's easy to find people (parents or otherwise) who want to brainstorm and give you advice. Those people can be advisers, supporters or part of your growing community of parents, but they aren't founders. If they are not actually working to launch the school, then they are not part of the founding team. Keep them informed, but don't invite them to work sessions where you need to produce results.

Your co-founders will carry the responsibility of starting the school with you. You will confront many struggles together. It will be useful to make sure you have people with some particular skills, gifts and talents such as:

Warm / Welcoming / Intuitive

• Keeping a team together is not just about the work. In times of confusion or disagreement, it is critical that you have a peacemaker to heal tension and conflict. They can also make newcomers feel welcome and help grow your team.

Outgoing / Communicative / Social

• At least one person will need to be actively spreading the word and being a spokesperson for the school. Ideally, lots of people will be promoting the school, but at least one person needs to make the public her #1 priority. She should be willing to make phone calls, return emails, and lead events. These activities are what get families in the door. [See communications section for more support.]

  Detail-Oriented / Organized

Detail-Oriented / Organized

• There are a lot of details to manage: filing legal documents, taking minutes, keeping records, and preparing for the business side of the ALC. Someone on your team needs to be ready to manage these kinds of details before there are too many.

Charismatic / Figurehead / Charismatic Leader

• More important than charisma is the ability to hold coherence for the vision of what you're building. "Leading" in an ALC means organizing people, resources, and conversations in support of making the team's vision happen. Some domains don't need one main charismatic leader. In that case, you can use agile processes to call forth leadership from everyone. Sometimes a team's job is to part ways with a strong personality who is power-tripping or derailing the vision. Using GameShifting in your meetings will keep you from getting stuck in one pattern of authority.