The 2 Most Important People in a Social Service Enterprise

I started this blog with the belief that there are lessons from the business world that can be brought to Social Service organizations and vice versa.

The first one I ever identified has to do with the leadership of an organization.? Every organization needs a Visionary and an Integrator.? For the uninitiated, these are terms from the book Traction.

Social Services Entrepreneurs start their enterprise with a double bottom line in mind.? They are interested in making a social impact.? They are also interested in creating a profit.

Both are equally important.

It’s not enough to create a profitable organization that treats people in recovery; it has to help people get well.

It’s not enough to house people with disabilities and make bank; it has to help those people thrive in their communities.

That’s the double bottom-line.? It makes money.? It also makes the world a better place by helping people.

When I first started in the insurance industry, I thought these organizations were fundamentally different from a manufacturer or a contractor.? Shouldn’t they be run differently?? After spending years working with Social Services, my belief is that Social Services are service businesses and they require a strong business structure in order to thrive.

I’ve had the joy to be around several organizations that have 10X’d their operations.? They all have 2 key people at the top.?

The Visionary

Every operation starts with one person with a vision of how to make the world a better place.? These people are usually focused on the Social Impact portion of the double bottom line.

Social Services Entrepreneurs have the most compelling stories.?

For recovery programs, they’re usually people in recovery.? My clients tell stories of sticking up corner stores and escaping mental institutions.? They tell stories of drying out on the floor of prison cells, vomiting on the floor, and wishing there was a bedsheet in the room so they could hang themselves.? They tell stories of muling cocaine in from Bolivia and distributing their product up and down the coast.?

The ones I work with are the survivors.?

The successful ones take their vision and are able to write it down.?

They can communicate the vision for the organization.? It is clear and concise.

They can explain a core focus.? They know what they want to accomplish and how they will do it with specific services.?

They must pick a specific service they will offer.?? They must identify the kind of people they will attract into the operation.? They have to create a long-term vision for what the organization will look like and what it will do.

These people are magnetic.? They tell a story of the need for the organization and how they will be a part of the solution.

The most successful of these entrepreneurs know how to bring other people along with their vision.?

The ones that can’t hit a ceiling. They have big ideas, but they are unable to implement their vision.?

They get stuck on compliance issues.? They get buried in quality control issues.? They lose their bills and get behind on payments.?

The most successful organizations have a second key person.

The Integrator

The integrator is the glue to the organization.? They take the vision and they make it real.? These are the people that are focused on making the profit margin work in the double bottom line.

They handle all the nitty gritty issues that the Visionary is not good at.? They handle Quality Control, HR, IT, and Finance.?

The double bottom line only works when there is a profit margin.? If there is no profit margin, there is no social impact.? The Integrator makes sure there is a profit margin to support the social impact.

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Here are some stories about the organizations I’ve witnessed experience explosive growth.

I work with an organization that runs a boarding school for children with behavioral issues.? It started as one building in a rural setting in West Virginia.? They had a dream of a campus with homes that resembled a single-family rancher.? Youth would live there and go home on weekends.? In the last decade, they have built a 5 homes, a chapel, and a gymnasium.? They started a thrift store and several quick lubes that financially support the school.? The organization has a president with a vision so big that the sky bends.? The Integrator came out of a corporate setting.? The Integrator made sure everything works.

The integrator created HR policies.? He hired all the people at the thrift store.? He ran day to day operations at the quick lubes.? He hired the next generation of middle-management so that the organization can thrive into the future.

It started with a dream and a mountainside.? It took a visionary and an integrator to bring it to life.?

Another organization runs sober homes, DUI education programs, and counseling for people in recovery.? The leader is charismatic.? He started the organization after spending years in prison for drug related issues.? When he exited prison, he slept on the floor of an apartment and mice crawled over him in the middle of the night.? He decided to create a safe environment for people to recover.? Banks wouldn’t loan money to him to buy a property, so a friend with money had to give him cash to buy a house and rehab it.? As he grew, he realized he needed help.?

His integrator came through the program and came on staff.? His integrator runs the day to day in the homes.? They’re a multi-million-dollar organization with 10+ properties.? The integrator makes sure the properties are safe and run effectively.? Bad actors are sent out.? He hires people.? He works with compliance.? When they buy new properties, he coordinates with the contractors.?

The visionary is freed up to spend days in court to advocate for people in recovery.? He creates awareness for the program so that they can find more people that need help.

It started with a guy that wanted to find a place to sleep without being awakened by rodents.

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Conclusion:

I have many more stories I can tell to illustrate this idea.? It always comes back to two people that find a symbiotic relationship.? There is a person with a big dream of changing an imperfect world.? That dreamer finds a person that knows how to sew together the threads of the organization into a tapestry.?

It takes two key people to deliver on the double bottom line.?