The Costs and Benefits of Hiring an Integrator

The cost of holding on the wrong Integrator (or #2 Leader) is incredibly expensive and in more ways than just their compensation package. The Integrator role is critical to the function (and profit) of your business. Hiring the wrong Integrator/2iC/COO has cascading impacts that will be felt all across the business.  We recommend that every small business fills that role of Number 2 Leader or Integrator.  And before you fill that critical role, look at the data of making a poor Integrator hire.

Breaking Down the Cost of a Bad Integrator Hire

According to Gallup, companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time.

Brad Smart, the author of Topgrading, further estimates that a mis-hire costs an organization 278 hours of wasted time. Both of these are staggering numbers that are exponentially detrimental to an organization.

These numbers are more damaging than one might think at first glance because they go beyond wasted salary (and the hourly equivalent of salary lost on wasted time). The Integrator is a high-level role, and the higher up the position, the greater the influence across the organization. In other words, there is greater opportunity for damage when the wrong person fills a high-level role like the Integrator. When the wrong Integrator is hired, the costs spill out across the organization with lasting negative impact to the bottom line; potentially for years.

Costs of mis-hiring your #2 Leader role include:

• Loss of productivity and mistakes made by mismanaged teams and operational processes
• Missed and mismanaged business opportunities
• Resources lost to hiring/onboarding programs, benefits, and severance pay
• Reduced productivity and teamwork as employee morale suffers
• Ripple effect as lowered morale causes “A players” to leave
• Company culture is undermined by loss of trust and loss of core values
• Current clients notice the lowered productivity and employee morale, affecting current business relationships

The importance of hiring the right Integrator

In companies running on EOS®, the Integrator is a critical executive-level role.  Curious about what is an EOS Integrator?

Gino Wickman, the founder of EOS Worldwide, defines the role as “…the glue for the organization…[the one who] executes the business plan, holds the Leadership Team accountable, is the steady force in the organization…[and] who is the filter for all of the Visionary’s ideas…” (EOS Worldwide Blog).

At VisionSpark, we understand the significance of the Integrator role and how the right Integrator can dramatically change a company.

Finding the right Integrator for your business is no easy undertaking. Even among many highly qualified candidates, not all of them will be right for your company culture or a good complement to your Visionary.

We often have 300 highly motivated candidates vying for a single Integrator search — each of them actively interested in the opportunity. This typically yields three to five truly “superstar” Integrator candidates for our client. In our experience, only about one in 75 candidates are superstar caliber, so it’s critical to cast a wide net.

The importance of process in hiring the right Integrator

Visionaries tend to be quick on their feet and excellent at understanding people. That also introduces significant weakness into their decision making around hiring. They hire with their gut, not science.

That’s where VisionSpark steps into ensure that there is a proven process that relies on science to ensure that your integrator search lands the right one!

We like to tease that once your organization hires the right Integrator, your Visionary will start planning their next five vacations. This may be a slight exaggeration, but having the additional support and the ability to trust that the company is in the hands of a capable Integrator will be a huge relief to your Visionary — and that’s no joke!

See what a VisionSpark client had to say about an executive we recently helped them hire:

“Tim has been a great hire! It has been almost like a fairytale. July has been our best month ever, and I was not even here – my wife and I were traveling to Italy and France.”
— Will Blanton, President, Blanton’s Air, Plumbing & Electric, Fayetteville, NC