Don’t Miss the Most Overlooked Stage of Work ⚠️

I was so frustrated. Confused. Sad.

I was a few years into building the team, and we were growing like crazy. And “like crazy” is not an overstatement – the prior year, we had grown 277% (!). The following year, we grew another 267% (!!). Cumulatively, we had grown revenue 14X in just three years. 🤯

It was an exciting time. It was also about to be a frustrating time.

The extraordinary growth had strained our systems and processes. We needed to overhaul and rebuild the operations of the entire division in order to not completely buckle under the weight of the growth.

My senior executive at the time suggested that we bring in an operations person – someone who could handle the internal operations and enable me to focus on vision, building the team, and being externally facing. I immediately realized he was right, so we did a search and hired a senior operations person.

“Whew,” I thought, relieved. “Now I don’t have to worry about that anymore. I’ll just get him up to speed, and then I won’t have to worry about operations ever again!”

I found pretty quickly that he was incredibly good when there was an existing process that needed to be done on time, with quality, and within budget. He was hardworking, good with people, and easy to work with.

But pretty quickly, the frustrations began to mount. I would say something like, “We need a new email process,” or “Let’s build a monthly reporting system to track performance.” I’d check back a few weeks later, and not much would be done. I would think, “Am I not being super clear here? We just need a new reporting system. Why isn’t it getting done?”

I started sketching out the kinds of reports, metrics, and processes I thought we needed. To be honest though, I did this begrudgingly. Shouldn’t I just be able to say, “We need a thing!” and he should go figure out how to create that thing? He was getting frustrated as well.

After nearly two years of being unable to figure it out, we parted ways.

I was frustrated with myself. Confused by what had happened. Sad that it didn’t work out. What had gone wrong?

Fast forward a few years, and I learned a model that changed everything. It helped me to see that I had misunderstood and mismanaged the situation. 

It was my fault. I needed to change how I understood myself and others and, in turn, how I managed and led. It changed my life.

The grave mistake I had made – one that leaders and organizations make all the time – was that I had skipped one of the most critical stages of work, Activation. 

Let me explain.

Three Stages of Work

My fundamental mistake was that I assumed there were just TWO stages of work. These two stages go by many names:

• Ideation and Implementation

• Creation and Operationalization

• Concept and Build

Whatever you call it, there is a widespread assumption that all work, all projects, and all initiatives are either in one of two stages – the idea stage or the implementation stage.

You are either coming up with what to do, or doing it.

This assumption is entirely wrong – and dangerous. When leaders assume this, they can do real damage – to themselves, their team, their culture, and their ability to be productive and effective.

There is a third stage of work, sandwiched right between the first two. – the Activation stage. It’s the most forgotten, neglected part of work, and skipping it results in frustration, resentment, and tension within organizations.

Above: All work goes through three stages – Ideation, Activation, and Implementation.

You know how frustrating it can be if you’ve been caught on one end of this spectrum or the other. Leadership wants operations to just take and implement the idea – how hard could that be? Operations is frustrated that ideas get tossed over the fence, half-baked, not well thought out, and the expectation is they will just implement (and likely with no new resources).

The reason I was so frustrated with my operations person was that I didn’t understand that I was trying to skip straight from ideation to implementation. “Hey, we need a monthly reporting system” was not enough. Even sketching it out was not enough. There was a whole Activation phase that needed to be worked through before we could dial in and operationalize the processes.

💡 Takeaway: All work moves through three stages – ideation, Activation, and implementation. It’s a mistake to skip any one of these stages, and will result in frustration, resentment, and tension.

While this epiphany explained the frustration, it didn’t give me enough to know how to avoid a situation like this in the future.

There was one more thing I needed to learn to fill in the gaps. With this knowledge, we can understand how to move from Ideation to Activation and, ultimately, to Implementation.

It turns out that different skills and talents are needed to get work done, and they correspond to the different stages of work.

6 Types of Working Genius

The 6 Types of Working Genius model, developed by Patrick Lencioni and his team at The Table Group, asserts that there are six fundamentally different types of talents, or geniuses, required to accomplish any kind of endeavor.

Above: Known as Working Geniuses, six types of work must be done to accomplish any work.

Let’s look at each type of work here:

⚙️ WONDER: The Genius of Wonder asks great questions and identifies the need for improvement or change.

⚙️ INVENTION: The Genius of Invention generates ideas or solutions. 

⚙️ DISCERNMENT: The Genius of Discernment is all about great judgment around the merit and workability of the idea or solution.

⚙️ GALVANIZING: The Genius of Galvanizing rallies the troops, generating enthusiasm and action around the idea or solution.

⚙️ ENABLEMENT: The Genius of Enablement initiates support, saying, “I’m on board. How can I help?” bringing enthusiasm and supporting the implementation of the idea or solution.

⚙️ TENACITY: The Genius of Tenacity is all about getting stuff done, ensuring that the idea or solution gets completed and that desired results are achieved.

If you’d like a more in-depth explanation, I have created a downloadable resource and a video walkthrough of Working Genius, the stages of work, how to use it, and links to resources. You can download that on our website at www.imago.consulting/workinggenius.

What’s important for our discussion is that each of these Working Geniuses corresponds to each stage of work.

Above: Each stage of work corresponds to two of the Working Geniuses.

The Wonder and Invention are all about IDEATION. Discernment and Galvanizing are all about ACTIVATION. And Enablement and Tenacity are all about IMPLEMENTATION.

We need all of the stages of work. When we try to skip a stage, it results in frustration, resentment, and tension.

Putting it all Together

Once I understood these two concepts, I could see what went wrong. I was trying to skip Activation, and failing. I was trying to toss ideas over the fence to be implemented, but they needed to be ACTIVATED first, and I had a role to play in that Activation.

My Geniuses are Wonder and Discernment, with a healthy dose of Invention. As I’ve thought about it over the years, I realized my operation manager’s Geniuses were Enablement and Tenacity, and what I was doing was Wondering and Inventing, and asking him to implement. 

Notice any problems?

A gap! I was asking my operations manager to Invent, Discern, and Galvanize new systems, processes, and procedures.

If I had a chance to do it all over again with this operations manager, I would have leaned into my Invention and Discernment to design the initial versions of the processes and reports and then worked with his Geniuses to ensure they were implemented fully, with quality, and run smoothly on an ongoing basis (all areas that he excelled in).

Did it work? While it was too late to save that situation, by putting in the lessons I learned here and others I gained over the years, by the time I left that team, we had grown an astounding 78X. I’d say that’s a pretty good ROI.

💡 Takeaway: All work moves through three stages – ideation, Activation, and implementation. It’s a mistake to skip any of these stages, and further, each team member has talents or Working Geniuses that correspond to one or more of these stages of work. The better we understand what work needs to be done and which Geniuses correspond to that kind of work, the more effective we’ll be.

Next Steps – Understanding and Using Your Geniuses

What are your Geniuses? What are the Geniuses of the team around you? How might you tap into those more fully? 

Consider specific initiatives or projects you are working on right now. Are they stuck in a particular stage of work? Do you have the right team composition, and are you tapping into the right Geniuses for that stage?

Free Download: How Working Genius Can Help You Unleash Innovation

As I mentioned, we’ve compiled a downloadable guide and video overview of the Working Genius. You can download that at www.imago.consulting/workinggenius.

Working Genius Facilitation

As a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, I work with clients all of the time to implement, leverage, and utilize Working Genius to generate profitable growth for their teams and their organizations.

We provide team mapping, executive team facilitation, group facilitation, individual coaching, and more while helping clients address barriers and opportunities for growth.

If you want to explore how we can help you instill Working Genius in your team or organization, just hit “reply” and let me know.

Until next week… Surfs Up! 🌊

  - Dave

P.S. I was honored to be a special guest on the We Are For Good Podcast this week. We discussed Working Genius and the Subscription Economy, leveraging innovation for impact. Check out Episode 486: Unlocking Your Working Genius for Innovation + Impact – Dave Raley if you're interested.

About the Author | Dave Raley

Consultant, speaker, and writer Dave Raley is the founder of Imago Consulting, a firm that helps non-profits and businesses create profitable growth through sustainable innovation. He’s the author of a weekly trendspotting report called The Wave Report, and the co-founder of the Purpose & Profit Podcast — a show about the ideas at the intersection of nonprofit causes and for-profit brands.

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