Starting a software development company with multiple co-founders taught the author many lessons, including the importance of rotating leadership roles. The author's team began with an overly democratic approach, which became paralyzing in practice. To address this issue, the team decided to rotate CEO responsibilities every three months. This approach allowed them to discover hidden strengths, improve decision quality, and increase empathy and buy-in among team members. The rotation was most effective during the company's first 9-12 months, when they were still discovering individual strengths and figuring out their optimal structure. As the company matured, they gradually transitioned to more permanent roles, which allowed them to build leadership capacity across the entire founding team. The rotation worked for them because they had strong personal relationships and trust among co-founders, shared core values, and commitment to the process. Other companies may be able to use rotation principles in cross-departmental leadership assignments, project leadership rotation, or temporary leadership roles during crisis situations.

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