Frustrated with meetings? Does this sound familiar?
Your friend: Can we get together for lunch today?
You: I can’t, I’m in meetings all day.
Your friend: You are always in meetings; how do you get anything done?
You: It’s a challenge, too many issues to solve.
Meetings, Meetings, Meetings – all day long! Meeting frustration allows this scenario to be repeated often among friends.
Many small businesses have turned to using the EOS™ Level 10™ (L10) meeting structure to help organize their day and workload. What does the L10 meeting structure do for your business? According to Gino Wickman, Traction Get a Grip on Your Business, the L10 meeting structure will:
Keep your team focused on the most important priorities
Hold your team accountable for the things they’ve committed to
Identify, discuss, and truly solve issues – once and for all.
The L10 meeting isn’t just for the leadership team. It’s a great tool to use throughout the organization at every level, including the departmental level. It keeps meetings on time and structures and creates accountability for the most important priorities. It also recognizes issues to be solved by all members, not just one person.
One particular part of the L10 is the Issues List. This list of concerns and challenges allows the team to effectively identify the issues, discuss the challenges and solve the problem, IDS. IDS has10 effective commandments to follow in solving issues.
It sounds easy, right? And it is as it can lead to a very robust conversation allowing the team to go deeper into finding the root cause of the issue versus using a band aid approach to the symptoms. Rarely will an issue not be resolved through IDS.
The L10 meeting allows team members to bring the whole person to the table, titles and egos left outside the door. Personal and professional opinions come into the conversation as the team builds a business relationship with trust, every idea or solution is respectfully considered. No tangents are allowed.
This is only one of the many tools in the EOS toolbox that will move your company forward to productive meetings and growth.
Companies running on EOS® know that articulating and communicating your Core Values is essential to getting the right people in the right seats to help you achieve your vision. That’s because these values define the characteristics that you want every single person in the company to share so you can build the culture you want in your company.
In each Quarterly Session, when reviewing the Core Values on the V/TO™ with my clients, I always ask, “Are these the right core values? And are you using them to hire, fire, review, reward, and recognize people?” The answers I get reveal that while most EOS companies are faithfully using the People Analyzer™ to evaluate their existing employees, many struggle with how to integrate the core values in the hiring process.
In general, I recommend that my clients focus on infusing core values into two specific areas in the hiring process:
Attracting Talent – Marketing your company’s values to attract applicants that want to work in a culture like yours
Evaluating Candidates – Confirming that the applicants share and exhibit your core values
Attracting Talent by Marketing Your Core Values and Culture
In today’s competitive job market, it’s getting harder and harder to attract and build a pipeline of high-quality candidates. In order to attract the Right People to your team, consider showcasing your values when marketing open positions. For example:
1. Create a standard blurb highlighting your values – use it in every job posting, on the Careers page of your website, and in your employer profile pages on job sites.
The culture at Acme Corporation is built on our shared core values – Positive collaboration, Proactive problem-solving, and Relentless curiosity. Positive collaboration means that we work together and make decisions for the greater good – with open, honest, and respectful communication. Proactive problem-solving means that we come to the table with ideas, recommendations, and solutions – instead of sitting back and waiting for others to raise an issue or fix a problem for us. Relentless curiosity means that we continually strive to improve, learn, and grow by asking questions, seeking knowledge, and stretching beyond our comfort zone.
One of the silver linings I found in the year of the pandemic was the time to focus on improving my skills as an Integrator. Turns out attending an online course with other dedicated Integrators and the Rocket Fuel Team was just what I needed to complete 2020 a little better than when it started.
The class modules followed by a weekly live Q & A session with Mark Winters and his team along with several other Integrators looking to hone their skills turned out to be helpful in ways I didn’t anticipate. Learning from others’ experience is something I offer my clients but has been missing in my own business recently and was very appreciated in the year of the pandemic.
Say what you will about “Zoom Fatigue” but I looked forward to my weekly meetings and that shared experience. A great reminder to surround yourself with people who make you want to be and do better.
Thanks, Mark Winters, Casey Cavelle, and the RF Team for sharing your wisdom, experience, and insights with us in Cohort 008, 2020
An Integrator (COO/President/GM) translates the vision into the actions your team must take to make your vision a reality. Focusing on clear communication, timely execution and accountability an Integrator elevates your team to a results driven machine.
As a Visionary if you find yourself:
Spending too much time on day-to-day issues instead of the big things that will allow your company to move forward
Frustrated by a team that lacks accountability and focus
Acting as both Visionary and Integrator of your company
Stressed, challenged and failing to meet goals
FractionalIntegrator Solutions™is your resource for experienced Fractional Integrators that are ready to help solve problems, get the team rowing in the right direction and delivering consistently effective results.
Whether remote or on-site a Fractional Integrator can help you take your business to where it was meant to be
What is a Fractional Integrator
Integrator is the term for the person who oversees the Leadership Team. Non-EOS companies may use the term President or COO. By understanding the Visionary’s big picture, Integrators create clarity and direction for the Leadership Team and the company, ensuring proper execution and delivering results.
A Fractional Integrator delivers the results of a full-time Integrator on a part-time basis with businesses that are not yet ready for a full-time Integrator.
A Fractional Integrator can bring order, accountability and results through focus and consistent communication by utilizing the EOS® model and tools designed to get results:
Weekly Level 10 Meeting™ Facilitation
Supervision (LMA™) of Leadership Team
Visionary-Integrator Same Page Meetings™
Effective Scorecards, and team and company Rocks
Actual issue resolution
A Visionary is ready to work with an Integrator when they
Are ready to let go and share the load with their team lead by an Integrator
Want a strong team that’s accountable and ready to step up to the roles they were hired for
Are eager to get back to the visionary work they enjoy and do best
Are ready to grow their business to the next level
I talk to Visionaries and often other Integrators who firmly believe the Integrator needs to be on site full time in order to be effective.
I have come to realize that at the heart of this question is a lack of vision. Yes, you heard me, I am accusing Visionaries and Integrators of having a lack of vision. Visionaries, the brilliant, hundreds of great ideas people can envision things that others can’t; electricity, walking on the moon, flying in outer space, artificial intelligence, things that the average human being said weren’t possible. How is it then that the minds that can dream up things like self-driving cars can’t envision how a remote Integrator could simply infuse the focus, alignment, and execution that will take their business to its next destination?
Visionaries act on things they see in their minds every day, they believe if they can see it it will be true and therein lies the problem. What Integrators do is often a mystery to the Visionary, they can’t see the magic essence that a true Integrator brings to the picture. What they see and can understand is only a small part of what an Integrator does, they see meetings, employee reviews, hiring and firing, organizing, making sure the company has a handbook, all things that they find tedious and want done but don’t want to do themselves or worse in some cases think they are doing already.
What they see are the things that any great COO, GM or Director of Operations can pull off and yes a lot of that needs to be conducted on-site and in person. What they don’t see is the vision that a true Integrator has for conducting, connecting and “integrating” their vision into the business.
The skillful interpretation of the vision and the ability to translate the vision into the actions necessary to make that vision a reality are often invisible to the naked eye. The intuition the Integrator has for aligning the team with the vision and prioritizing what needs to be executed when the ability to know if someone is the right person in the right seat and what needs to be done when in order to achieve the most important goals. Oh, and let’s not forget seeing which goals are important and which are out of sync or a distraction from achieving the vision. These invisible unique abilities are difficult for the Visionaries to see and if they can’t see it then how can it be done? More importantly to the original question is how can it possibly be done when the Integrator isn’t even here?
Here I have to ask the question: If the average human being can’t see how electricity or self-driving cars are possible then why do electricity and self-driving cars exist? If your friends and family can’t imagine how or why you started a business to bring your vision to life, why did you start that business that others can’t see or understand completely?
I read an article a while ago and loved how the author framed the remote Integrator topic so I will share an excerpt from his article;
Is it necessary for the Integrator to be located full time geographically in the business? Many say that an Integrator can’t possibly be effective when working remotely. But this brings us back to the difference between a COO and an Integrator, they are distinct functions.
As John Pollock so passionately puts it “FUNCTION supersedes proximity” don’t underestimate the value of your Integrator just because they are not front and center or IN a specific location.
Proximity does not matter…”
Having this subject arise again recently prompted me to go back to the post by John Pollock on the Rocket Fuel group discussion. As a Fractional Integrator who often works remotely I find myself engaged in this discussion quite often. Thank you, John, for the clear and passionate way you articulated this, it has stuck with me over time.
While there are certainly circumstances and individual Visionary/Integrator duos that will require them both to be on-site there is much more room for remote VI relationships to create wonderful results together than is frequently believed.
I also read that post by John Pollock on the Rocket Fuel group discussion, he is a visionary who understands and values the unique abilities of a true Integrator, most likely because he found his Integrator and has experienced the essence of what an Integrator brings to the business.
If you are a Visionary who has realized that you need an Integrator to get where you want to go with your product or service get ready for your next big challenge. Unfortunately, great Integrators are rare and in short supply. According to the book Rocket Fuel it is believed that in the small business world there are 4 Visionaries for every solid Integrator in the world.
It has been said that finding an Integrator can feel a lot like finding the mythical Unicorn. Added to that rarity it is also extremely important that you find the Integrator who is the right fit for you and your business. Just like Visionaries not all Integrators are the same and you will need to find someone who can see and understand your vision the way you see it before they will be able to make it a reality.
As a Visionary leader you already know that achieving your business goals is difficult but did you know that according to the Harvard Business Review, only 8% of leaders are good at aligning strategy and execution — and those 8% see staggeringly stronger financial returns. So here is where I ask the question; is eventually arriving at your destination good enough or do you want to get there faster and stronger with enough time and energy left to enjoy the destination? An Integrator has the unique ability to align strategy and execution to get you where you’re going faster and with some hair left when you get there.
Can an Integrator be effective when working remotely? If you can envision it together, it will be true. So the question should really be; Can you envision a way to extract the true value of an Integrator even if they aren’t standing right in front of you?
Fractional Integrator Solutions 