The four personality types that bring a startup or any movement to life
I watched Bill Gross a while ago on the study he did based on the many data points he collected at his company incubator, IdeaLab, on why startups fail. I also watched his talk on what matters most in startups. What I learnt today was he also developed another framework that Bill Gross developed on the four different personalties that come to make a company. Every company or movement require these four personalities which come together in different order, they are known as EPAI:
Entrepreneur — The idea person. The one who explores what it might take to get ideas off the ground.
Producer — The doer. The one to push projects forward and get them done.
Administrator — The process builder. The administrator is concerned with planning, organising, and building out processes.
Integrator — The people person. The integrator fixes problems between people by helping address the emotional level of people.
Say you’re sitting in a classroom. One kid will be looking out the window and there is grass and trees outside. One person, would see opportunity in that space. A vision based on a pain point or dream. What could go outside in the grass, a stall, a themepark, a carpark etc. This is the entrepreneur personality type.
The producer is the student that goes along with the vision and sees what comes next. They are the person who may not always come up with the vision but is very good at downloading it. Their brain makes sense of the pitch and the vision. However they are more on the sensibility and building size — their brain thinking about how the stall should be, what is needed in the theme park or carpark to operate. They build the vision out, taking the words into action.
The E (entrepreneur) alone will have an idea but without the P (producer), the vision might have some value but it will peter out. The producer is needed to bring the vision to the next level. However with just the E and P alone, the vision, idea and organisation might just be a mess.
This is where the administrator is needed. They see the vision, the plan and take care of the operations. They are the student who makes sure the tasks get done. That everyone has the resources they need. That the finder details on what is required for the stall, themepark and carpark is taken care of. That the permits, regulations and rules are met.
And then finally, there is the integrator, the student in the class who is probably not looking out the window but looking at the other three, the E, P and A and seeing how the three of them should all work together. They figure out how to make the group more cohesive and how to get alignment.
It’s useful to know which one you are good at, so as to figure out what you may be missing and whom you might require to partner up with. In knowing that different people see the world completely differently, you can gain the benefit of having the insights from what the other type sees from a unique angle to yours on the exact same situation. Having all four types of personality, will help bring your startup, organisation or movement to life.
Originally published at https://blog.happyness.design. If you are interested in finding more tips, hacks, tools and scientific methods behind how to become more happier and productivity, join us at www.happyness.design and check out our newsletter.
