Many company owners are used to doing everything themselves in their business, from managing projects to ensuring staff accountability. However, some others attempt to hire a team of individuals to carry out their jobs and start to build up tasks amongst them, but they have failed at aligning the goals and interests of the team with what their businesses stand for. This is why an integrator is needed, so they can step into these shoes and execute tasks and projects as effectively — and efficiently — as possible.
Integrators are individuals who connect the dots in an organization between visionaries and their employees, and even set goals along the way. Hiring an integrator helps you spend less time on some projects because you leave it to them, and then you may focus on more significant tasks that will help you reach your goals more quickly. They come into businesses and help owners filter their ideas, swing into action on those ideas, and prepare and plan strategies to ensure no barrier prevents them from getting a good result.
Businesses that are extremely successful today realize what is needed for their company’s tremendous growth, which is vision and action. Sound like you need an integrator?
What Is an Integrator in Business?
The term “integrator” was coined by Gino Wickman in his best-selling business books Traction and Rocketfuel. You typically learn about integrators when implementing the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) as a management practice for your company.
“An Integrator is a person who is the tie-breaker for the leadership team, is the glue for the organization, holds everything together, beats the drum (provides cadence), is accountable for the P&L results, executes the business plan, holds the Leadership Team accountable, and is the steady force in the organization.” (EOS Worldwide). Plus, every business implementing the EOS management system really needs an integrator.
Reasons Why You May Need an Integrator
Integrators are people who can get involved with many things within a company, understand how they affect each other, and effectively bring out results from them. They are professionals that immediately improve a business upon arrival due to their wealth of skills and experience. Here are the top five roles an integrator can seamlessly fill.
1. Excellent Team Managers
For any business that wants to be very successful, they need to have a team that is highly functional and well-managed. Having a disorganized team can cause unnecessary work spillover, increase toxicity in the work environment, bring about high turnover rates of employees, and even induce a bad reputation. Hiring an integrator helps to bridge this gap and effectively ensure that your team members are well on their feet, trying to carry out their work as efficiently as possible.
Also, there are times when several things need to be done for a business to be on the right track, which means the owner alone can’t do it all. Even when you can hire people to work with you, there might not be the luxury of time for you to watch out for what your team does because of the many gaps you need to fill. This is why you need integrator services to help you look after your employees, make sure they are accountable, and remove every fruitless attitude that may slow the progress of your business down.
Integrators are excellent at pinpointing even a potential challenge, and implementing a solution before it even becomes an actual “problem.” This can be crucial for any business!
2. Leaders and Problem Solvers
In your business, you can’t be the only person leading your employees all the time. Integrators are considered some of the best leaders because they know how to work with both an owner and the employees, and since they have worked in several positions, they already know how to easily acclimate to just about any situation. This is where they employ their wealth of experience and demonstrate seasoned leadership skills to ensure that everything runs well in your company.
You may have challenges as you continue to move through your business journey. In fact, every great business and company out there has come to face a particular problem one way or the other when trying to set things right in their organizations. Well, this is where you will need an integrator who can take responsibility for issues and find every means to resolve any outstanding situations quickly — and quietly.
3. System and Process Builders
Without a system set up and particular procedures to follow in your business, you won’t be able to set your workers on the right track without a lot of micromanagement — which no one wants or enjoys. For example, having Standard Operating Procedures will help your employees understand their roles and how to execute their tasks. Integrators are people that can help with setting up company SOPs to aid your workers in effectively carrying out their jobs.
Also, systems like knowledge sharing, automation, and workflows are processes that integrators can help implement. In fact, integrators can set up a knowledge-sharing system in which everyone can easily discuss what their challenges may be and find almost immediate solutions. Integrators can help create processes that are seamlessly aligned with your business brand.
4. Unification Specialists
One thing that you want to avoid in your company is having a divided workplace. Unity is one of the main factors that ensures a company is within its range of accomplishing goals — and focusing until it achieves them. Integrators are unification specialists because, since they know what you want, they already have an idea about how your team should execute their tasks — together.
You can’t have a particular vision for your business and not have all of your employees on board. This is why an integrator comes into your organization and ensures that every action taken is unified towards achieving your business aims. Integrators work with different units within your business to connect them all and ensure they are all centered on successful outcomes.
5. Vision Achievers
When you are about to start your company, be it an online business or any enterprise, there’s one thing you will always have in mind, which is your vision. Companies have ideas in place so that when they kick start work, they focus their energy on targeting that vision. The problem is, in accomplishing the dream, they may get distracted along the way. This is where an integrator comes in to help out because they can serve efficiently as both online consultants and offline advisors.
Integrators are success-oriented, and they are also vision achievers. They help you to achieve whatever your goals are by discussing your plans, drawing out the realistic ones, and sieving the unrealistic ones. After that, they try to ensure the commitment of every employee towards achieving your goals, including themselves. By making a leader’s vision known to the entire team, it can also help everyone work toward a common goal, which builds “bonding” situations along the way. Just watch as your productivity levels begin to rise!
Summary
If achieving success in your business is your goal, this is possible if you can get all hands on deck to ensure that every process is followed through to fruition. Established companies today have integrators who can fill in the gaps and ensure that all units work effectively and without challenges to accomplish their aims and objectives. In short, hiring an integrator might just be one of the best business decisions you ever make!
