Small business team dynamics: A Human Design Penta case study

Running a small business means juggling a lot of different balls, one of which is getting the right people in place to support operations--and growth. Having the right people with the right skills, and who are the right fit for the group, is absolutely essential when your team is small.

In Human Design the Penta describes, and maps, the energy of a small group of 3-5 people (a family, a small business, a team within a larger organization, etc.). It’s a “trans-auric form” -- an energetic form created when the auras of 3 or more people come together (and as people leave or join the group, it changes). For more on what a Penta is and who may -- or may not -- be comfortable working in one, please see the Teamwork by Design article.

We can use the Penta to break down an existing small business team's strengths, gaps and individual team members' roles and contributions to the business. Doing this kind of analysis can help understand how everyone on the team does their best work and where gaps exist that may be slowing your team down or creating challenges.

So let’s have a look at an example.

Small Business Case Study

This small business is an online education & training company that, at the time of the study, was a team of 3: Ms. Green, the company owner/founder; Mr. Blue who is a co-instructor and curriculum developer with the owner; and Ms. Red who handles most of the customer service and administrative work for the business.

The business began with Ms. Green sharing content and educating on social media. As it grew she hired Ms. Red to help with customer service and digital product delivery. Mr. Blue was the next team member brought on (making the business officially a Penta) to collaborate with Ms. Green on content and curriculum, and eventually began co-instructing in the business’ training programs.

When I began this case study, there was plenty of money coming in but deciding what to do with it and where to go was an issue. Many different products were in development, the team was experimenting with different ways of delivering their training programs and the business owner (Ms. Green) felt the vision and plan for the future was a bit lacking.

Ms. Green was finding she was spending a lot of time making sure Mr. Blue was doing what he was hired to do and feeling like she had to micromanage him to get things done. Ms. Red was also expressing doubts that this role was one she wanted for the long term.

(Please note: Identifying details have been removed from this case study to protect the privacy of the client.)

Small business team - individual members

Before we even get into the Team’s Penta, we can see that only Ms. Red is really built to work on a small team long term.

Ms. Red

As a Builder with a full strength in the upper Penta, Ms. Red will likely feel at home in the Penta as long as she has a clearly defined role. Ms. Red enjoys collaborating with others (and will likely enjoy working with others, finding it easier to get things done while co-working for example.) As a 5th line with a good amount of individuality, giving her space to function as an individual and do things in the way she wants to do them will likely work best.

Mr. Blue

As an Advisor, the generative nature of the Penta likely won’t feel comfortable for Mr Blue long term. He may feel like his skills are not fully recognized in a small group setting. He really likes to have control of his time, energy and resources and may find it difficult to be managed. He will work best when he has ample time alone and the ability to rest when needed.

Mr Blue will likely fit best in an advisory or consulting role where he can move in and out of the group and isn’t directly being managed.

Ms. Green

The business owner herself (Ms. Green) will likely find working in partnership to feel better long term than working inside the small team but as the founder/owner she can envision a time down the road where she’d be overseeing the team more than working within it which could work very well for her.

Interestingly, Ms Green was already primarily working in partnership with both Mr. Blue and Ms. Red. The team all works remotely--weekly meetings and work sessions were usually either Ms. Green and Mr. Blue OR Ms. Green and Ms. Red--rarely did the entire team of 3 get on a meeting together or work directly on the same project.

Team member's strengths:

 Team member's Shadows & Distractions:

The entire team has an Undefined Inspiration function which gives the team the shadow & distraction of Losing Focus. In a 3 person team, the undefined Inspiration function makes seeking a focus even more of a challenge. The team may find itself focusing on the wrong questions, losing focus and missing chances for inspiration.

In this particular team, there is also a gap in the Penta Skill of Vision (more on that below) which means the team is lacking vision and direction, unsure of where they are headed. This coupled with the distraction of Losing Focus makes this team especially susceptible to getting lost and distracted chasing shiny objects.

Ms. Green mentioned collaborating with Mr. Blue on curriculum sometimes made her unintentionally mentally defensive, like she didn't know enough. Mr Blue mentioned how working in the group can make him feel like he needs to try really hard to keep up and he'd like to be more aware of when he needs to step back and recharge.

Small Business Team Penta

The Penta focuses on only 6 strengths and the energy flows in only ONE direction--the movement is from the Sacral to the Throat. I find Nathalie Keijzer’s visualisation of the Penta as the “BG5 Dude” really helpful in understanding this:

The energy starts at the bottom with the internal workings of the Penta (or the “legs” of the team), which feeds the generative power vortex of the Penta (the “backbone” of the team -- this is the material driving force and 100% of the energy of the Penta flows through here), which then disperses out into the world to demonstrate in three ways: 70% of the energy goes into marketing to clients (the “mouthpiece” of the team) while the rest is split between planning for future and overseeing operations (the “arms” of the team).

In the case of this team, we can see right away that Ms. Green is carrying the team’s foundation with her skills of Culture (5), Coordination (46) and Capacity (14) but there are important gaps in the team’s inner workings in the areas of Reliability (15), Commitment (29) and Vision (2).

Getting into the upper Penta or the external workings of the business, Ms. Red brings the full strength of Marketing to Clients (1-8), with Mr. Blue also having the skill of Implementation (1). Both Ms. Red and Mr. Blue have the skills of Administration (31) and Oversight (33) but there are gaps in Planning (7) and Accounting (13).

Team Dynamics

Pulling the team together:

• Reliability (15) – This is the ability to pull the group together into a cohesive and reliable team. We are more stable and reliable with you around.
  MISSING
• Culture (5) – This is the ability to establish the inner life of the office/team through dress code & timing of meetings. It’s the way we do things around here!
  Ms. Green

Holding the team together:

• Coordination (46) – This is the ability to stabilize the group into a cohesive functioning unit. This is where the group’s personality is developed.
  Ms. Green
• Commitment (29) – This is the ability to help the group commit to a goal and achieve it. We’re all on the same page and committed to working together.
  MISSING

The material driving force:

• Capacity (14) – This is the ability to generate resources that helps the business thrive. Resources = money, people and/or needed supplies. This is the motor that jump-starts any business.
  Ms. Green
• Vision (2) – This is the ability to establish the direction for the business. Also points the way for the best way to spend the money generated. This is the direction we are moving forward.
  MISSING

Marketing to Clients:

• Implementation (1) – This is the ability to get your product or service out the door into the hands of customers. Sales.
  Ms. Red, Mr. Blue
• Public Relations (8) – This is the ability to attract the necessary attention. This is about getting noticed.
  Ms. Red

Planning for the future:

• Planning (7) – This is the ability to move forward successfully into the future through planning, R&D and having the right people doing the right work. Identifying what needs to happen as we move forward.
  MISSING
• Administration (31) – This is the ability to put the plan into action by making sure everyone fills the roles & does the work necessary. This is the ability to be organized and stay on top of things.
  Ms. Red, Mr. Blue

Overseeing operations:

• Accounting (13) – This is the ability to know how (profitable) your business is. Keeping track of the right numbers and details to keep you in business.
  MISSING
• Oversight (33) – This is the ability to oversee the entire operation and make sure everything’s running smoothly. This is the eyes & ears that oversee clients and employees.
  Ms. Red, Mr. Blue

Potential Problems and Possible Solutions

There are a number of important gaps in this team as their Penta demonstrates.

Lack of Reliability (15):

• It is hard getting and keeping the team together.
• The business has an incongruent “office” life that is unstable and chaotic. Leads to a lot of turnover.
• Keeping people working together is a problem.
• Nobody knows what anybody else is doing.
• Team members may not be reliable in some aspects of their work, big or small: in the quality of their work, in the things they say they are going to do, in their timing, in terms of being trusted.

Long term the goal would be to hire someone who brings the skill of Reliability to the team. The moment you fill this gap you would have a culture with a consistent pattern that brings the Group together and holds them together.

Possible short term solutions:

• Implementing a team-wide project management system to make sure the team can see what everybody else is doing and the deadlines for projects so everyone can take direct ownership of their work.
• Setting regular expectations for checking in with each other even asynchronously since team-wide meetings are rare.
• As the business owner with the skill of culture (5) and Coordination (46), I suggested Ms. Green really lean on her ability to set and hold standards and create a balanced, harmonious team that is present and ready to work.
• Make everyone aware of this gap and the possible consequences of it (sometimes just understanding the gap exists can help the team fill it to some degree.)

Lack of Commitment (29):

• There is no energy behind commitments.
• Everyone will get negatively affected and start making excuses.
• Everyone will accuse others of not putting in enough effort.
• No one follows through on their commitments.
• There is no purpose or pride in what they are doing.
• People feel like an outsider and give away company secrets.
• Owner/managers lose faith in their business and don’t really know if it will work or if they have the energy to carry it through.

Long term the goal would be to hire someone with the skill of Commitment because once you fill this gap the Group begins working together as a committed unit with a purpose committed to the same ideas and goals.

Possible short term solutions:

• Bringing the team together (perhaps at a yearly team retreat) to make conscious commitments to the business and play a role in developing the business’ goals, including the roles they’d like to play in achieving them (this can help each team member feel more ownership and loyalty)
• Setting quarterly and yearly team-wide goals and rewards for reaching them
• As the business owner with the skill of Culture (5) and Coordination (46), I suggested Ms. Green really lean on her ability to set and hold standards and talent in creating a balanced, harmonious team that is present and ready to work.

Lack of Vision (2):

• No clear sense of where the business is going.
• There is no/very little energy available for the upper half of the Penta (including consistent marketing).
• There is a deep disconnect with the way in which the business is presenting itself to the outside world and what is really going on.
• There can be the misuse of capital, resources being funneled in the wrong way.
• Nobody knows what is going on and no one can figure out how it is all supposed to work.

Long term hiring someone with this skill would mean the team knows the direction they are moving forward in and it’s clear the best way to spend the money & resources generated by the business.

Possible short term solutions:

• Hire a consultant to help generate a strategic vision for the business
• Work with a coach or mastermind group to get some outside input on the best use of the business’ resources

**In my opinion, the lack of Vision is the biggest gaps in this business and the hardest gap to fill “short term” or in a temporary way. I suggested to the business owner that she make hiring someone with Vision a priority as soon as she was able.

The 14-2 is the material driving force of the business, 100% of the energy flows through this pillar and while the business owner, Ms. Green, brings the skill of Capacity (14) -- and as such the business ha a good amount of money coming in -- all of the generative power of the Penta is focused and funneled through vision. Vision (2) gives the business a clear direction and helps determine the way in which resources are dispersed with an eye on the future, past and present -- it feeds the marketing machine (70% of the energy continues up through the “mouthpiece”) of the Penta that gets the word out about what the business does. Without a functioning 14-2, the business is not likely to survive.

Lack of Planning (7):

• The business is not thinking about the future and there is no future plan.
• No money is going into Research and Development – so the business is not developing anything new.
• Only a trickle of money is made available to take care of customers in Administration.
• You just rely on what seems to be working in the moment or limping along from one moment to the next with no idea of where to go.
• Suddenly what was once hot now has become cold and they have nothing else to offer.
• Other businesses immediately copy you and now you're not the only one in the market.
• The customer is not being taken care of because things are not scheduled on time.
• People don’t know when things need to be done or who is scheduled to take care of it.
• There are no systems or processes in place for things to run smoothly.
• People are just making it up as they go along.
• If they don’t think about the future – they don’t have one.

Long term obviously you’d want to hire someone who is able to provide this skill as filling this gap would mean the team is able to plan for the future and identify what needs to happen as the business moves forward.

Possible short term solutions:

• Implementing project management software and mapping out projects clearly so everyone knows when things needs to be done and who is doing it
• Doing regular surveys of customer base to proactively keep on top of trends and what people will need in the future Hiring a consultant to help with long term planning and Research & Development

The lack of Vision (2), coupled with this lack of Planning (7) and the team-wide shadow of losing focus (undefined Inspiration) means this team is really making it up as they go along, potentially getting distracted with shiny new ideas and lacking follow through, spinning their wheels and missing opportunities.

Lack of Accounting (13):

• Any manager/business owner who cannot put their finger on the right kind of statistics is a manager/owner who does not see what is going on in their business.
• Don’t Know: what anything costs, how much they are spending on marketing, if they are making a profit or not, if the business is growing or not, if they are paying the right taxes or not.
• Inadequate bookkeeping, no day-to-day access or storage of records.
• Trouble planning effectively for the future because you don’t know where you’ve been.

Long term hiring someone with the skill of accounting will allow the team to keep track of the right numbers and details to keep you in business.

Possible short term solutions:

• Hiring out the accounting, bookkeeping and tax filing for the business
• Using accounting software to automate some of this work
• Giving team member’s explicit tasks to gather and keep track of data that’s relevant to their roles on the team
• Having a consultant create an analytics dashboard that allows the team to keep track of the most relevant metrics

Lack of Fundamentals:

The team also has no Penta skills with a 1st line attribute so there is a lack of fundamentals team-wide, meaning focusing on the details and having a solid foundation is likely a challenge for this team.

A possible short term solution for that may be hiring someone to help create Standard Operating Procedures and other detailed, foundational processes that the team can lean on.

Takeaways and Next Steps

The gaps of reliability, commitment and vision especially were immediately visible when Ms. Green started to lay out the issues she was having with Mr. Blue needing to be micromanaged to get work completed on time, Ms. Red dropping hints she wasn’t sure this would be a gig she wanted for the long term, and the general kind of third line experimentation that was happening in selling a lot of different products and services while trying to figure out the big picture vision & direction.

As a result of our Penta work together, Ms. Green brought the team onto Milanote, a project management system to streamline responsibilities, due dates and team wide collaboration and communication. She also leaned on her skills of Culture and Coordination to implement its use and make it clear the expectations and standard operating procedures.

Mr. Blue mentioned it was very cool to see how he could see his Penta skills more clearly and had ah-ha moments in our session on ways he’d like to contribute to the team more proactively/in new ways. He didn’t feel connected to his skill of Implementation/Sales (1) at all but was willing to experiment with how he might contribute there. Ms. Green was also very excited to bring Ms. Red more into the marketing and public relations side of the business, tapping into her natural strengths (1-8) in the Penta.

After our Penta work together Ms. Green hired a consultant with both the skills of Reliability (15) and Vision (2) for big picture planning and then eventually for ongoing marketing & sales work within the team. This brought a clear focus on their training programs that led to 2 very successful launches (nearly $1 million in revenue) and expansion of the team to bring on additional coaches to support the new clients -- growing to an OC16 after a few months.

This went really well for a while and then Ms. Green felt she no longer wanted to run an OC16-sized team and scaled back, turning the training programs from small group experiences into on-demand digital courses. Ms. Red and Mr. Blue both left the team in this transition.

Despite having an OC16 executive leadership strength, I wonder if the growth was too rapid and that’s why it felt draining for her to all of a sudden be responsible for so many team members (she especially found managing the team dynamics and expectations of team members challenging).

Ms. Green now has one main support person she works in partnership with and is enjoying that freedom and her business has continued to evolve to fit her lifestyle and energy.

Feedback from the small business team:

Business owner, Ms. Green:

"This penta work with Jackie was so incredibly helpful, even though I already had a solid foundation in Human Design. Having an objective perspective come in and dive deep into the dynamics of my team was invaluable.

Jackie helped me see the gaps in my Penta so clearly - things like the lack of defined vision and the potential for friction between [Ms. Red] and [Mr. Blue]. But more than that, she gave me the tools and reminders I needed to address these gaps.

I'm so excited to bring [Ms. Red] more into the marketing and public relations side of the business, tapping into her natural strengths. And I feel empowered to have those tough conversations with [Mr. Blue], knowing that with the right boundaries and communication, we can work through any challenges.

This Penta work has given me a new level of awareness and practical tools to maximize the potential of my team. I'm grateful to have had Jackie's expertise and look forward to see how it's all unfolds."

Mr. Blue:

"This Penta session was so insightful and really helped me understand myself and my role in the team in a whole new way. I had intellectually known about the Penta model, but Jackie helped me see how the generative, competitive energy can actually be quite draining for me as a non-sacral type.

As Jackie pointed out, I need to be more aware of when I need to step back and recharge, rather than just trying to keep up. I realized I really need to advocate for roles and responsibilities that align with my natural strengths, rather than just being managed.

Hearing about the potential for leadership in the upper Penta channels was a real 'aha' moment for me. I'm excited about tapping into that energy, but I also know I need to honor my need for solo time and space to process it all.

The discussion around communicating my needs and boundaries to the group was so valuable. And I'm even considering whether long-term involvement in this Penta environment is the best fit for me, or if shorter-term engagement may work better.

Overall, this process has given me a much deeper understanding of how I operate in a team setting, and the specific strategies I can use to thrive. I'm grateful to Jackie for her insights and for really helping me see myself more clearly."