Which comes first for a growing company: an EOS Implementer® or an EOS Integrator®?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that’s the wrong question.
The real question is this:
What operating system is running your business?
Every company already has one. It’s producing exactly the results it was designed to produce—whether you intentionally designed it that way or not.
Most of us don’t think much about our operating system until we become frustrated with the results it’s producing.
In my experience, that’s almost always where implementing EOS® begins. You’re not growing fast enough, you’re not profitable enough, or the business has become more complicated than it ought to be. At some point, you realize that getting what you want requires a better way of running the company.
Only then does the Integrator question become relevant.
What Is an Integrator?
The problem is that I think we’ve gradually blurred the definition of what an Integrator is.
Today, people use the term to describe Chiefs of Staff, Executive Assistants, Operations Managers, and just about anyone who’s better at follow-through than the Visionary.
So, let’s take a quick trip to Mark’s History Corner.
The term “integrator,” as we use it today, first appeared in organizational theory in a 1967 Harvard Business Review article by Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch. Their integrator existed for one purpose: to align specialized departments that naturally pull in different directions, including marketing, sales, operations, and finance.
EOS builds on that original idea.
A true Integrator isn’t there to help the Visionary stay organized. They’re there to run the company by:
- Owning the P&L
- Functioning as the tiebreaker
- Having the leadership team report to them
I can already hear some of you saying, “Well … that’s definitely not my Integrator.”
And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you have the wrong person. It probably means you’re describing a different role.
What Comes First?
That brings me back to the original question:
Which comes first: an EOS Implementer or an Integrator?
Now that we’ve clarified what an Integrator is, I think the answer becomes much simpler.
Neither. The operating system comes first.
Could you build your own operating system from scratch? Of course. Could you piece one together from several different systems? Absolutely.
Personally, I prefer not to reinvent the wheel. The odds that I’m going to discover something fundamentally new about organizing a business after thousands of years of human history are slim.
That’s why I start with a proven system like EOS. Once I understand it, I can customize it to fit the business I’m trying to build.
That’s my answer: Start with the operating system.
Get that right first, and everything else—including whether you need an Integrator—becomes much clearer.
Every Saturday, I share my personal thoughts, practical frameworks, and lessons learned from leading EOS Worldwide.
