This scenario examines a cofounder dispute in an early stage business where responsibilities, decision rights, and expectations were never fully defined. Sinclair oversees operations and product quality. Brenner handles financial oversight while maintaining a separate full-time job.
As the company faces early financial strain, each has taken actions the other views as overreach. The mediation begins at the point where differences in working style, communication, and assumptions about authority have created a sustained conflict.
The exercise provides a structured setting to work on cofounder alignment, role boundaries, decision processes, and how mediation can surface underlying interests when a partnership is no longer functioning smoothly.