In his book, “Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business,” Gino Wickman envisions an organizational chart with the guy at the top as the “Visionary” and the guy immediately below him as the “Integrator.” In Wickman’s model, the Visionary is the company’s creative sparkplug, the guy who sees opportunities and possibilities and is always pushing to embrace them. The Integrator is the one who takes the Visionary’s ideas and puts them into practice. According to Wickman, you almost never find the Visionary and the Integrator roles in a single person. I think he’s right. Although you may find a single person trying to play both roles, the effort is rarely successful. The roles are just too different and require vastly different personality types. So which role should the company owner play? Good question! For the answer, please read below.
Are you a Visionary or an Integrator?
Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, “The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.” That’s a pretty good description of entrepreneurs. And while this may be a broad generalization, entrepreneurs tend to be a little like crows, always distracted by the next shiny thing they see. They may want to move on to their next BIG IDEA while their organization is still trying to digest the last one. So in the best of all worlds, the small business owner who is also an entrepreneur (yes, that would be just about all of them) would hold down the role of Visionary while installing a really effective manager in the role of Integrator. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always go that way.
True visionary leaders tend to be terrible managers . . . I know, another broad generalization, but it has the benefit of being true most of the time. If they’re honest with themselves, most of them will tell you that. Their creative minds are focused on the exciting possibilities they see on the horizon, and it’s difficult for them to concentrate on the mundane details of current operations. But here’s the problem. Sometimes they find themselves in the role of Integrator which is absolutely the wrong place for them to be. An Integrator needs to be an effective manager who is well-organized, can juggle a lot of details, and who can marshal the right processes to get stuff done . . . all the things the Visionary lacks.
In some cases, there’s no choice but for the Visionary to try to shoulder the Integrator role. Maybe this is a brand new startup and there’s no room in the budget for a talented Integrator. Or maybe the old Integrator left or got hit by a bus and we haven’t been able to find a new one yet. In those situations, the Visionary has to muddle through until someone more suitable can fill the Integrator role. But in other cases, the Visionary has also claimed the Integrator role due to ego or trust issues. After all, why should someone else get the credit for bringing my brainchild to life? Besides, someone who is not as emotionally attached to the idea as I am may screw up the execution. So with these thoughts, the Visionary clings to the Integrator role even though, deep down, he or she may know that someone else belongs in that spot.
The message here is simple. If you’re a Visionary (and you know who you are), stick with that role . . . it’s what you’re best at and it’s where you bring the most value to the company. If your situation prevents you from handing off the Integrator role, make it your primary goal to change that situation as quickly as possible. If it’s your ego that’s in the way, get over yourself.
As Wickman points out, the roles of Visionary and Integrator are just so different and require such different skills and aptitudes, it only makes sense to keep them separate.
