Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business has a chapter titled The People Component. In it, the author Gino Wickman, talks about the Visionary and Integrator role. Here’s how he describes them:
Integrators (pg. 92)
The integrator is the person who harmoniously integrates the major functions of the business. When those major functions are strong and you have strong people accountable for each, great healthy friction and tension will occur between them. The integrator blends that friction into greater energy for the company as a whole.
Visionaries (pg. 94)
The visionary typically has 10 new ideas a week. Nine of them might not be so great, but one usually is, and it’s that one idea each week that keeps the organization growing. For this reason, visionaries are invaluable. They’re typically very creative. They’re great solvers of big ugly problems, and fantastic with important clients, vendors, suppliers, and banking relationships. The culture of the organization is very important to them, because they usually operate more on emotion and therefore have a better barometer of how people are feeling.
Put another way, entrepreneurs need to know that they aren’t expected to be both the visionary and the integrator. The strongest leadership teams have both a visionary leader and an integrator leader, and they need to work well together.
What else? What are some more thoughts on visionary and integrator leaders?
David Cummings on Startups 