One of my co-founders quit during the past recession, when our sales dipped to zero in no time -- we actually had zero sales for 9 months straight.
I think he simply couldn't accept the failure, even while it obviously wasn't anything wrong from ourselves. He started resenting any minor annoyance as an act of sabotage. If I came late to the office (I've always, always came late for the past 20 years; I hardly pass the door before 11AM if not for a serious reason), if the sales guy failed to close a sale (well, good luck with that...), he lived that as a personal offence and a deliberate attempt to annihilate his own efforts.
What the article didn't mention is that this emotional burden can alter relationships and literally make the atmosphere poisonous. It's quite incredible, but an 8 persons group can be filled with petty politics, resent and conspirational talks. As a result we had a near complete reset (the team went from 8 to 2, then back to 8 in 6 to 9 months).
>> even while it obviously wasn't anything wrong from ourselves
Don't take this as belittling your efforts or your results, because I'm not trying to, I'm simply stating what is probably a fact of life. When you have 0 sales for 9 months straight, eventually somebody has to take responsibility. Preferably, that should be everyone pitching in to make one last charge up the hill, but it doesn't change the fact that someone needs to and eventually will take responsibility and blame for what happened (or did not happen, rather). This is the founder's blessing and curse, huh?
Under normal circumstances that's probably true, but in the middle of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, where uncertainty rules and everyone is cutting back purchases of everything until they see whether the govt will bail out the economy and how effective it will be, you can probably cut yourself some slack if your erstwhile customers are hesitant to buy from a new startup.
I think he simply couldn't accept the failure, even while it obviously wasn't anything wrong from ourselves. He started resenting any minor annoyance as an act of sabotage. If I came late to the office (I've always, always came late for the past 20 years; I hardly pass the door before 11AM if not for a serious reason), if the sales guy failed to close a sale (well, good luck with that...), he lived that as a personal offence and a deliberate attempt to annihilate his own efforts.
What the article didn't mention is that this emotional burden can alter relationships and literally make the atmosphere poisonous. It's quite incredible, but an 8 persons group can be filled with petty politics, resent and conspirational talks. As a result we had a near complete reset (the team went from 8 to 2, then back to 8 in 6 to 9 months).