Dear Farillio member,

On 9th April 2021, you asked our amazing expert Carl Reader on the Go Far Fast Show:

“I've got two co-founders and we've been arguing over the direction that we want the business to take. We have a four-year-old business, but it now looks nothing like the business plan we wrote at the start – and we can't agree on what to do next. What's your advice?”

And Carl said:

Transcript:

““Oh wow! It’s not something I've had direct experience of, but I have had the experience of different motivations, viewpoints and so on. There's a book that you absolutely must read called Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman. It talks about the partnership that needs to be at the top of every business. While it doesn't directly address your issues, it will provide you with a framework to work around them. Rocket Fuel talks about the visionary and the integrator and how they need to work together. If you take Apple, for example, Steve Jobs was a visionary and Steve Wozniak was the integrator. Walt Disney was a visionary, and he had a right-hand person who was an integrator. I don't know their name and unfortunately, that is a common trait – the integrator is the behind-the-scenes genius that makes it happen. Between yourselves, you need to agree who is the visionary and who is the integrator. Hopefully, you get that point because if you don't, and you have three visionaries or three integrators, then quite frankly the structure needs changing. If you can agree that one of you is more inclined to be a visionary and one of you is more inclined to be an integrator, then there is a model to make it work. There is a level of trust that's needed between yourselves to understand that this is the visionary role, and this is the integrator role - we have to subscribe to what each other says. So, how does that look in principle? In my business, I am the visionary and my co-chairman, Ben, is the integrator. We had some challenges at first when we read through this book because the organisation chart showed the visionary as being above the integrator when actually they are not. Both sides of the equation have different ways of communicating. A visionary tends to be very big picture, very optimistic and so on. The integrator tends to be detail-oriented, very people orientated and so on. There are certain ways that you have to work with each other and even certain words you have to say to make the relationship productive. What I would say is read this book. It is a really good template for how a partnership should work, regardless of whether it's for visionary/integrator relationships. It's about understanding who the individuals are and hopefully, you find that you've got a fit for their visionary / integrator relationship. From there it will help you understand the frustrations that each side has. It would help you build some empathy and then it's much easier to build a clear path forwards. If however, you've got a team of visionaries who are all big picture and nobody wants to carry the burden of actually driving things forwards or if it's a true dispute, then you need to reach some form of mediation. This should be covered in your Shareholders Agreements, and I hope you have those in place, but hopefully, it won't get anywhere near that stage. It might just be that we need to gain an understanding of where everybody is coming from and gain agreement on who is leading the ship.”

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Want more from Carl?

You can also find Carl’s answers to other questions being asked by you and your community in our Dear Farillio Expert section on our blog site, and Carl’s great guidance on business here.

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