It takes two types of leaders at the helm of a 10-250 person entrepreneurial organization to have the "Rocket Fuel" it needs to hit the next level: the Visionary and the Integrator.

The Visionary entrepreneur’s passion, drive and creativity are the key elements that help launch a business and fuel a company’s growth. But when a company is growing, the Visionary entrepreneur starts to feel swamped with the overwhelming workload, and their momentum begins to stall and sputter. Every great Visionary hits this threshold.

Sure, the “pop-pop-fizz-fizz” of Alka-Seltzer can provide temporary relief for an upset stomach, but it can only help so much.  Usually the problem stems from eating spicy or greasy food, so if you continue to eat the wrong foods, the stomachache just keeps coming back.

Jim Collins famously admonishes all business owners and leaders in his classic book, Good To Great, “Before you begin your business journey, get all the right people on the bus, get all the wrong people off the bus and make sure that everyone on the bus is in the right seat”. Every business owner  I speak to knows this to be true. No one  disputes the logic. So why don’t more leaders act on it?

Here is a great story from Les Brown where he draws an interesting analogy.

One day, a man was walking down the street and sees a dog on a porch that was just sitting there, whimpering, whining and moaning. The man was curious as to why he was whimpering, so he went and knocked on the door and a guy came out and said, "Yes, how may I help you?" He said, "Sir, is this your dog?"

A few months ago I published a blog post entitled Too Small To Make a Difference? The point of the article is that everyone in a business matters—from the owner to the newest “front line” hire. I further suggested that entrepreneurs work hard to engage everyone in the EOS process, including the use of Rocks, Level 10 Meetings, and Scorecards throughout the organization. 

When my clients are struggling with that concept, I’ve found that a painstaking approach to clearly and simply defining these tools really helps. Because try as we might, entrepreneurial leaders and managers often over-complicate things.