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One-to-one support for the person in the Integrator seat

Expected to be the Integrator. Never shown how.

Somebody decided you were the right person to run the business day to day. Nobody explained what that actually means, what authority comes with it, or how to do it when the week goes wrong.

If this is roughly where you are.

You were promoted into the seat because you are capable and because you were there. There was no handover, because the person before you was the founder, and it was never a defined job.

You are expected to hold people accountable, but nobody has told the team that. You run the leadership meeting, and it turns into a round of updates no matter how you open it. You raise the same issue three months running. You are the one chasing, and it is starting to feel like nagging rather than a role.

And the honest part: you are not certain what the job is. You know the framework language. You are less sure what you are actually supposed to own, what belongs to the founder, and what you are allowed to decide on your own.

Visionary and Integrator roles: the Visionary brings ideas, innovation and possibility; the Integrator brings structure, accountability and results

The role is more misunderstood than it is difficult.

An Integrator is not a business manager. An Integrator is not an advisor. An Integrator is not the person who takes work off the founder's desk so the founder can do the interesting things.

The Integrator is the person who holds the operating system together. You coordinate how everyone's role fits within it. You protect the rhythm, you make sure priorities have owners and outcomes, you ensure issues get solved rather than repeatedly noted, and you close the gap between the vision the founder holds and the execution the business needs.

The most common way it goes wrong is drifting into operations. You end up doing the work rather than making sure the work gets done, and within a quarter you are the new bottleneck.

The absence of a capable Integrator is what makes an operating system quietly fade.

I see it in every business I hand over. Not a lack of tools, and not a lack of understanding. The absence of someone whose actual job is holding the system together. Without that person, the founder gets pulled back into the day to day, the meeting rhythm drifts, issues stop being solved properly, and the business reverts to how it worked before. It happens slowly and then all at once.

So businesses elevate someone internally, which is the right instinct. Then they leave that person to work it out alone, which is not.

I built this because the people in that seat kept asking me for help, and because not every one of them needs, or can justify, a fractional Integrator at my day rate. What they need is to be taught the role and to have someone experienced to think with while they grow into it.

Available now. Someone experienced to think with, while you grow into the seat.

This is the work I already do. When I hand a business over, the person stepping into the Integrator seat does not get left to work it out alone, and the same support is available whether or not I have worked with your business before.

It is not a course and it is not coaching in the abstract. It is a standing session, monthly or as things arise, to work through whatever is actually in front of you:

  • A leadership meeting that has turned into a status update and will not turn back
  • A priority that stalled in week four and nobody wants to say so
  • Holding a former peer to a standard that did not exist last year
  • A conversation with the founder you have been putting off
  • Working out what belongs to you and what genuinely needs to go upwards

Sessions are booked in advance and invoiced monthly.

Enquire about one-to-one support

One-to-one support enquiry

Six to eight people, each from a different business. First cohort forming.

I am currently building a group programme covering the disciplines of the role, with the considerable benefit of hearing how other people handle the same problems in businesses that are not yours.

It is not running yet, and I would rather tell you that than take your enquiry and leave you waiting.

What it covers:

Running a meeting that decides things. Why leadership meetings collapse into updates, and how to run identify, discuss, solve as a genuine team behaviour rather than you presenting solutions for people to agree with.

Making the numbers useful. Building a scorecard people actually look at, and introducing it as an early warning tool rather than a performance management mechanism, which is the difference between it sticking and it dying.

Quarterly priorities that survive week ten. How to run a rock-setting session, how to test a priority before it is confirmed, and why priorities people set themselves get delivered and priorities handed down do not.

Accountability without authority. The hardest part of being elevated internally. Holding former peers to a standard when your job title changed but the relationships did not.

Managing the founder. The Visionary and Integrator relationship, what to escalate, what to decide yourself, and how to disagree with the person who owns the business.

Protecting the rhythm under pressure. What to do when the business gets busy and the meeting is the first thing anyone offers to cancel.

Format: group calls across three months, with one-to-one sessions available alongside.

Expected to be around £2,400, with a lower founding rate for the first group.

Put your name down and I will come back to you with dates and cost as soon as the first cohort is set. If you would rather not wait, the one-to-one support above is available now.

A self-paced online version will follow once the group programme has run. Waitlist members hear about it first.

If you are reading this on someone else's behalf.

Elevating an internal Integrator is usually the right decision and it is regularly the moment an operating system either takes root or quietly dies. The difference is rarely the person. It is whether they were taught the role or left to infer it.

If you are about to move someone into that seat, or you have already done it and it is not going as well as you hoped, that is worth a conversation. Sometimes the answer is this course. Sometimes it is a handover period with me alongside them. Occasionally it is that the person is not right for the seat, and it is better to know that early.

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You were given the seat. You should be given the role as well.