must determine what role best suits your nature.
A successful business or project requires three basic functions that are performed by three very different types of people:
(1)Visionary—the artist who sees an innovation that can be turned into a business.
(2)Marketer—the believer who sees how to get that innovation to as many people as possible.
(3)Manager—the general who organizes the people and executes processes to get the innovation to market.
If you work for a big company, your job title probably dictates which of these roles you play. If you are upwardly mobile, the most important career adjustment you can make is to make certain that your duties fit your personality type. When your job taps your talent, you can excel.
As soon as you take on responsibility for a business or project, you will need to balance your team with people who are visionaries, marketers, and managers. Just as baseball players specialize in different positions according to their individual abilities, business people are most effective when you play them according to their strengths.
When first starting your own business or project, you may have to handle the responsibilities of all three roles alone. As your business grows, you will want to focus on what you do best and bring in specialists to fill the roles that complement your own talents. Your first challenge is, therefore, identifying the role you were meant to play.
Each of the three roles adds something to the way a business or project develops. Along the way you must become proficient in all three functions so you can work together with all the different specialists who will have an impact on your career. Each of the three represents an essential aspect of leadership. Together they are more than the sum of the parts. Synergy between these three roles creates the kind of chemistry that customers and employees can trust.
During the growth of a business or project your participation is essential. After some years the business will mature to the point where it operates with or without you. Finally you will transcend all the roles by filling them with people who are more effective than you. If you fulfill that scenario you will enjoy the freedom to work on your business rather than in your business. But that will only happen if you dedicate yourself to lifelong learning to master all the skills needed for success, and if you operate your business as a learning organization that develops leaders.
Fortunately, this kind of learning is fun. It is a practical process of discovering what works while getting to know yourself and your team better. Self-knowledge gives you the confidence and self-esteem to go forward. As your comprehension improves, you earn the right to associate with increasingly effective people and to participate in a greater variety of business cultures. Understanding people who think differently from you brings the kind of pleasure usually reserved for explorers and travelers. It brings a sense of adventure to your career.
Each of the three essential disciplines requires a different “language.” Visionaries speak in broad, general terms about what is possible. Marketers use words to create action. Managers converse to handle details and measure outcomes. Each function requires a different kind of focus. Your personality and body type probably make you more suited to one role than to the others. You’ll perform best when you select the role that you also find the most attractive.
VISIONARIES
Visionary leaders love the adventure of stepping into and navigating uncharted terrain. These people thrive on the chaos that goes hand-in-hand with start-ups. Every business starts with a vision. Behind the logo of every familiar company name is an inspired individual who made that vision a reality by treading boldly into unknown territory.
A visionary leader is also curious about what people want and how to get it for them. Business visionaries see patterns in the marketplace before other people do. Their minds are filled with theoretical constructs or mathematical formulas. Their ideas, however, are clear and workable. These folks live in the future.
There are plenty of starry eyed believers who fantasize about great achievements. Visionaries are different. They roll up their sleeves and make it happen. A seemingly mighty force of nature, they sweep others along with their personal force.
What is the force that drives visionary people? According to author Gary Hoover, “It all begins with curiosity.” Gary attributes the great businesses of the twentieth century to visionaries like Sam Walton, Herb Kelleher, and Michael Dell, whose curiosity opened doors that others didn’t even see. These visionary leaders marched to the beat of their own drummers, throwing off caution and advice from others who thought their visions were impossible.
Curiosity is the source of innovation, and innovation is the engine that powers entrepreneurship. Innovative visionaries get the ball rolling. They are the people who ask, “Why not?” They pioneer new things and new ways of doing things. They are not averse to risk. They have the toughest of the three functions because they challenge the status quo.
Inventors, futurists, designers, artists, and actors all fall into this category. Steve Jobs is the consummate visionary. His Apple Computer made computing power accessible to every man, woman, and child. Like Jobs, visionaries see what is possible—not what is impossible. They turn those possibilities into probabilities. Alone, they generally flounder. But with a marketer selling their ideas, they can touch many people with their creativity. And when a manager lends support to their dreams, their ideas take root.
A reporter who interviewed car-maker Henry Ford at the pinnacle of his success later commented that Ford seemed too idealistic to be believed. He had to keep reminding himself of Ford’s tangible accomplishments to keep from dismissing the man as unstable. Creative types often come across as unrealistic to people who consider themselves as having both feet planted firmly on the ground.
Most entrepreneurial businesses are started by visionaries and grown by marketers. Together, they can conquer the world. An upbeat duo, one dreams and the other believes those dreams into existence. Once the company achieves solid earnings, it can bring a manager on board.
Combining a visionary with a manager to start up a business is perilous. One is from Mars, and the other from Pluto. They are always interfering with each other’s function. Visionaries are important during every phase of a business to keep the company on course. But they are especially important in the early design stages. When managers create the vision for a business, they build tragically boring systems. In a fully functioning business team, the marketer is often the translator between the visionary and the manager.
Imagination and artistic flair provide the inspiration that gives birth to a business. Visionaries have those qualities by nature. On the other hand, when visionaries try to manage large projects, their inconsistency leads everyone astray. These folks can leap from one position to another effortlessly. They thrive on paradox, and seem to have a special ability to create order out of chaos. Life is art for these dreamers, and consistency seems to them like the product of mediocre minds.
Most visionaries are driven by the dream of a wonderful world. They want to make the current world better and they truly believe they can. Some people think they’re crazy. The newspapers of the steamboat’s day dubbed the invention Fulton’s Folly. The masses denounced the first sewing machines, calling them an abomination to God. It takes unusual courage to follow one’s vision in the face of this kind of resistance.
You can’t blame entrenched interests and huddled masses for fighting change. Vision is a kind of creative destruction. Visionaries create disruption; they displace familiar patterns to usher in new realities, and they seem genuinely befuddled when culture resists their ideas.
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