Steve Jobs had Steve Wozniak. Bill Gates had Paul Allen. Warren Buffett had Charlie Munger. Mark Zuckerberg had Sheryl Sandberg. What do these successful duals have in common? Each visionary leader – Jobs, Gates, Buffett, and Zuckerberg – had the good fortune of having a strong second in command to implement their vision.
Whether they are called COO, General Manager, VP, Operations, or Integrator the success of an organization lies not only in the strengths of the person making it happen, but in strengths of the person making it work. There is nothing more powerful than an entrepreneurial minded leader working closely with their implementor to make their ideas come to life.
Organizations benefit from their Visionary’s right-brain creativity. This is what launched the organization in the early years and propels it in the future. However, this can only be achieved when the Visionary is not sucked into the day-to-day operations. The ongoing tactical activities require left-brain focus and does not come naturally to most entrepreneurs but falls in the sweet spot for their implementor cohorts.
EOS has popularized the Visionary/Integrator
partnership and provides a structure to leverage the strengths of both
leaders.
The Integrator is deeply
involved in overseeing the various operational functions and dealing with the
day-to-day challenges. People issues,
operations challenges, meeting facilitation, and business disruptions are all a
part of the integrator’s responsibility.
A Visionary freed from all the business distractions is free to pursue new opportunities to express their creativity and inject the same organization energy felt at startup. But this rarely happens without that strong number two making it all happen.
Need to find and Integrator or strengthen an existing Visionary/Integrator relationship? Click here for more information.