All organizations go through growth stages. Learn about those stages here. Launchers find their market, become profitable, have fun, implement processes, and become scalable. However, if launchers aren’t careful, they can teeter into overprocessing, which will slowly lead to irrelevance.
So what is the secret to staying in the sweet spot of predictable success? The key starts within leadership.
Leadership will Determine Your Success
Most companies naturally start with a visionary. This person is usually the launcher. They have a vision and are known as the head-in-the-clouds individual. As they kick their idea off the ground, they hire an operator. The operator is the person who gets the work done. They are known as the ruthless finishers.
The combination of these two people will move a business from early struggle to fun.
To continue to scale, though, you must hire a processor. This person will help the organization figure out how things should run. They are seen as the underground system making everything work smoothly.
The few businesses who get through the “early struggle” years have three factors in common:
- They focus, focus, focus on their profitable and sustainable market.
- They understand no one person can be everything (the visionary, operator, and processor).
- They place value in having synergists on their team.
A synergist is the glue that holds a team or company together. They give up their need to work on their goals and do what is best for the company. They often have great people skills and get to the root cause of issues within team dynamics.
Many times, the synergist is naturally found in a group environment. They are someone who tends to be a wallflower, but are noticed when teams work together better when they are around.
How to Find Your Synergists
Anyone can become a synergist no matter his/her leadership style. Start at the top level of leadership. Get your leadership team to a place where they can move from operator to operator synergist, visionary to visionary synergist.
When necessary, the visionary, operator, and processor will help the team communicate and stay focused. This will help avoid the biggest pitfalls when it comes to growth in a business: Poor communication and lack of execution.
Once your leadership team has conquered the synergist style, push the mindset through the whole company. The ideal sweet spot is to have your entire team be able to move into the synergist role when necessary. Then everything will be smooth sailing.