The Real Reason Structure Doesn't Stick When You Have ADHD

You've built systems before. You probably built them well. The problem wasn't creating them. The problem was maintaining them once the novelty wore off.

Wednesday's episode explored why ADHD founders often struggle with operational consistency. This episode covers the structural solution.

The systems integrator role sits between the ADHD founder and the rest of the business. It captures ideas, filters priorities, protects the team from constant pivots, and builds the documentation that turns founder insight into repeatable execution.

Skye and Robbie break down the four functions of the role, how it differs from an EA or COO, how it scales as a business grows, and the hiring mistakes that cause founders to recreate the same bottlenecks they're trying to solve.

What We Cover

• The four functions of a systems integrator and how they differ from a standard EA or COO role
• How raw creative output gets processed through pre-agreed prioritization filters before it reaches the team
• Why the role acts as a gravitational buffer against novelty-seeking attention wells pulling the team off course
• How the role scales from solopreneur to COO-led team
• The three hiring mistakes ADHD founders make when trying to solve the structural problem

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Transcript

Stop Fighting Your Brain

SPEAKER_02 0:00

You can't white knuckle it. You're not gonna brute force this. And also don't try to fix the ADHD. Don't try to fix the founder, necessarily like build structure around it to handle it. I'm kind of in the camp of ADHD is not a disorder. It's just disordered if you're in the wrong environment for it.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hello, everybody, and welcome to today's episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. Today I am really excited to be talking to you about resistance to structure and what we can do as ADHD founders and ADHD people if we struggle with structure. Because this is something that's very, very dear to our hearts because it's something that we do in our own business. Um, so yeah, we're gonna get into those practical strategies. This is also the final episode of the Founder Struggles series, although I'm sure that we'll be talking about a lot more founder struggles after this. This just wraps up this part of the series. So if you've enjoyed it, please let us know what you've liked, what you'd like to see next. And uh, as always, I'm joined by my wonderful husband and co-founder, Robbie.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Yeah, we've taken our own advice and we've implemented some minimum viable principles to our outlines and gotten them down to three pages max because I think I get a little bit carried away.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

What we're not trying to do, this is the key, I want to say this up front, super clearly. I am the ADHD founder in this scenario, so is Robbie. Neither of us would make good systems integrators, which is what we're gonna be talking about today. So we're not trying to brute force the ADHD out of the business. We want it to stay. We like ADHD, you know, ways ADHD people work. They're the reason these businesses exist in the first place. We're just trying to give a frame that can hold this kind of space.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

It's kind of been the through line of all of these episodes. Has it's been you can't white-knuckle it. You're not gonna brute force this. Like, and also don't try to fix the ADHD. Don't try to fix the founder necessarily, like build structure around it to handle it. Like you, I'm kind of in the camp of ADHD's not a disorder.

ADHD Strengths And Zone Of Genius

SPEAKER_02 2:10

It's just disordered if you're in the wrong environment for it.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

We're not trying to brute force ADHD out of the business. We've never been about that. We have ADHD, we think ADHD is incredibly valuable in the right environment. We're always looking at figuring out how to how to actually help the founder be themselves. So rather than saying, hey, you have to exist in a world where you have to maintain structure, acknowledging and accepting that this is something that they're not good at. And I know that's tough to accept sometimes, and I've struggled with that, but being like, okay, this isn't my natural space to like organize folders and things like that, but I'm going to work in a world where the system is redesigned to support me, basically.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Yeah. I mean, I think we talked about last episode all the different industries where they would probably really benefit from being able to build some external structure to support their talent in their field without having all of this sort of administration burner burden or just letting them stay in kind of their zone of um zone of genius.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

And that's the thing is like when you look at the research into the strengths of ADHD, what you'll find is it's it is the creative thinking, the original thinking, and all of those sort of zone of genius things. So a lot of times when you talk to very successful creative founders, and I we've had the opportunity to do that um on this podcast, what you tend to find is that they benefit from a lot of white space, space to think, space to ideate, space to create. It's very hard to do that if you're being driven into the ground by all the structure that you're not doing a great job of maintaining.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Yeah, it can be very stifling. It can be this feeling of being boxed in. I haven't because I'd never looked at zone of genius, zone of excellence.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:02

I'm sort of using these terms because I've I've talked to you and used them with you. But I think zone of excellence, like you're good at it, but you're not lit up by it. And then zone of genius is kind of your inflow and it's the thing that only you can do. So that's kind of the definition of that.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Yeah, and it's it's really a cool thing to think about. It's also sometimes called Ikiga, but that's more about like what they'll pay for and what you're also good at. But it's this idea of being confident, and a lot of this does come down to confidence, which you can learn over time. I think it's not necessarily inbuilt, but becoming confident in the fact that the thing that you do, the zone of genius that you have, is valuable enough to build a system around it that supports it, rather than handing it off to other people or feeling like you can only do it under certain conditions because you have all of the associated struggles with organizational issues.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Yeah, I think there's also sometimes this feeling of that's just the cost of this. Like I either have to, we just have to embrace that this is the this is the cost of it. And and I I think also like, yeah, when that cost is falling on the COO or whoever else in the business is having to sort of catch and and maintain that structure under you, there's kind of a feeling of like, well, there's no, you know, what am I gonna do? Uh the alternative would be I sort of box myself in, follow, do everything their way, and it's too stifling. We need to have that ability to pivot. I think there's an analogy there with like musicians where they think that there's often this idea that you have to have trauma to make art kind of thing or to make music. I think that's a pretty common idea, right? Is it like and so you they maintain this like level of self-destruction because they think it's essential to their craft?

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Recently I heard Taylor Swift talk about that. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

Like reinforcing it?

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Or just the idea that people said, like, oh, you know, when you are happy in love, maybe you won't make as good music. And it was something that she worried about. I think it was happy in love. I don't remember exactly.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Well, I think there there is this very pervasive idea that depth and like suffering are sort of intertwined, I think. I think when it comes to ADHD founders, um, I think realizing that the downsides of your ADHD, the sort of rough edges of it, can just be supported with the pro like with the appropriate external structures. It doesn't have to be something that you round off yourself.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

That's so true, actually, this idea, because I I feel like we often end up in this position of like trying

The Myth That Chaos Is Required

SPEAKER_01 6:30

to get everything done at the last minute and being really stressed and barely making it through. And the idea that you could have a successful business, a good business, and you could be relaxed, and you could still be yourself. You're not being put in a box. I mean, it's it's the dream for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Yeah, you don't have to be hating the ADHD parts of you when they have these negative external externalities. Actually, I mean, again, we're gonna we're gonna do a whole thing on the DSM, but like the definition of ADHD in the DSM is conditional on the degree to which it negatively affects your, I think, school, work, and personal life. And again, like people, I don't think people are being uh are growing out. I think we've I think we've let go of the idea that people are growing out of their ADHD. I think what's happening is people are putting in enough systems in place in their lives or finding niches where they aren't really experiencing those negative externalities of still having ADHD, still being a little bit time-blind, a little bit, you know, having working memory issues, things like things like that. But it's no longer a significant impact in their life to the point where they become sort of subclinical ADHD.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Yeah, yeah. And in some ways, maybe that's what we want for all of you.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

We want to all become subclinical ADHD according to the DSM diagnostic.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

All the previous episodes we've been talking about, all the

Why Founders Cannot Maintain Systems

SPEAKER_02 7:45

problems that we've been talking about, the solution has always been external structure. And this episode is gonna be about how you're not gonna be the person doing the external structure. I think relying on the ADHD founder to also be the person responsible for implementing all the systems, it's hard enough to catch yourself when you're doing something you're leaning into or like exhibiting one of those sort of ADHD symptoms, and it's gonna have this negative effect. And then what you're gonna remember to run this SOP that we've made a plan for. It's like that's much easier to give to someone else.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Exactly. Actually, I wanted to tell you a story about that because it's kind of a story of why we now run a business where we help ADHD entrepreneurs hire on board and work with their own systems integrators.

What A Systems Integrator Actually Is

SPEAKER_01 8:30

A systems integrator is not a COO. A COO is a chief operations officer, so a chief of operations, and nine times out of ten, although maybe there's a COO out there who's not in this position, they need a team to exist. And if they you don't have one, they'll probably suggest you hire one as a first step. So it's a role built on leverage, managing a team, multiplying execution through other people, you know. So it's it's a good hire, but not necessarily a first hire. A systems integrator is also not a standard EA. A standard EA is somebody who's gonna manage your inbox, gonna manage your calendar, gonna buy things for you. And a systems integrator can and will do that, but they're not going to simply do that. That's more, especially, you know, you can get higher level EAs who really take this on board and learn the skill. And I would argue they're almost systems integrators by trade without really having the language for it. But your standard EA is gonna be a little bit more reactive to you, at least without specific training. I have ADHD. I got it, you know, I found out I had it when I was doing my PhD, I started doing research, and then a couple of years later, I think as when I started first coaching people. So I've been an ADHD coach for five years. At this point, if you say to me, I can't get my work done, nothing will change this. I'm just like, okay, give us a month and we'll sort that out. You know, I'm not too stressed about that. I've never had a client where I've been like, oh, this is too much. Like, we're gonna have to give up. You know, there's always a solution. But the thing that I have found over the years is that it's it's quite painful to hold systems together by yourself. And I've had a lot of clients who, you know, we've worked together over a very long period of time and we've built all these systems and they work, but it's the maintenance phase that gets really tough. Keeping the routines, keeping them up. It's a lot of work. And so when I started working with business owners specifically, that became a bigger issue because the time of a business owner is money, for lack of a better word, because they could be using that time to keep growing the business. And so we were kind of stuck in admin mode. And it was really when I started helping people. I I did it just because I was like, okay, well, my job is to help people to have good lives with ADHD. This has to be the next stage, whatever comes of it. And genuinely, I was like, well, this might be the end for me. But I was like, right, that's it. We're gonna have to hire somebody and help them work with you. And I had a client who I did that for. I knew what I was doing. I've I've actually hired many people for myself and for my team over the years. I'd never done that for anyone else before. It was incredibly transformational to hire somebody, the systems integrator, as this person became. And then I didn't have to give any homework to the person that I was working with. I could just work with them, help them understand their ADHD, help them live in their zone of genius, help them get their system set up for a business success, and then hand off all of the routine parts of the job to somebody else. And it's it's really transformed their business. They are able to manage so much more. And those basic things that just kept tripping them up are now no longer a problem.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

When you mentioned maintaining systems, I think one of the good examples of that, I think, is trying to maintain a project management or like a task management system and how many I've kind of overloaded, abused, used incorrectly, and then discarded. And I think the solution to that does seem to be just stop being the person who's in charge of managing that system. Like just have a simplified task list that's just between you and your your EA or whoever it is the person that you're working directly with, and have them manage it for you. And when you create like so, yeah, with I've been using your prioritization filter finally after resisting it uh for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

They always go, they always find the prioritization filter in the end.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Yeah, I've I've set it up in a way that it's hard for me to just put everything into urgent, although not impossible. The temptation is still very much there. But the only way to actually fill in most of the details is to go down to uncategorized and put it in there.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

I think what I'm looking forward to next is having someone else manage that entire thing for me, take things off it that they can do, and it's been a game changer when I'm working with clients now to be able to say, not just we'll help you understand your ADHD and fix your systems, but also, oh, and then we'll get somebody onboarded into your business who's not as expensive as a CEO by a long shot, which we'll talk about in a second, to then be able to maintain and run these systems so that things can happen. I mean, in my own business now, I can literally just use my favorite AI, ask it a question, and it has full context of what's going on across my business. And that's not because of me. That's because of something I architected, but it's not because of something I am maintaining. I think that is the difference. You can be the architect, because I've had clients say, Well, I don't want to have a system, I don't know what it's doing. You are architecting it, you know exactly how to use it if you need to, but you're not doing the maintaining. That's the key. And so when we talk about this resistance to structure and the practical strategies for that resistance, the ultimate answer, sort of through a process of you know, removing everything else, kind of has to be we don't maintain the routine, we give it to somebody else.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

I think the other role that the systems integrator can handle as well is being that buffer. So I just wanted to clarify, we're pulling the integrator from this idea of three COO archetypes. But I think basically the integrator idea comes from this pairing of visionaries with integrators. So I guess a visionary CEO with an integrator COO kind of matches what we're talking about. The other analogy I was going to use is in sort of describing the system's integrator is another sort of partial description or like close analog is a manager of like an artist. So you've got like these, you've got this talent, this musician, actor, sort of artistic talent. The left hand have a manager who sort of again is performing some similar roles. I think like there's not a it's not a total overlap, but there's there's there's a bit of a Venn diagram overlap of that kind of I think visionary is a nice relabeling of like ADHD CEO. I think ADHD.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

I think it is. I think that's what people do talk about then as well. The visionary.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

And so that's sort of what we're talking about, is pairing it with an integrator. So I mean, I think at larger scales, especially like VC funding scales, I think you would just get an integrator CEO.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

But when you're bootstrapping and you're building your own business, sometimes this is the last piece you get. I mean, I specifically work with business owners who've managed to make a million dollars and never hired an integrator and now it's burning them out.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

Yeah, I we'll do a whole episode

Capture And Filter The Idea Flood

SPEAKER_02 15:30

on sort of premature hiring of COOs.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

So there's four main functions that we see working with a systems integrator. So four main things that systems integrators run for you. Two of them are generally done in that EA level, but two of them are also less likely to be done in an EA level as well. And so the first one is capturing everything. So being that person where you can send a late-night Slack message, or as I just did to my own systems integrator before we got on this call, five different voice messages just brain dumping everything from this morning. By the way, in case you guys want to know what happened to that information, it is now all organized in our shared task list, which is pretty fun. Anyway, so capturing everything, organizing it, nothing gets spilled or lost, everything gets redirected to the right place, everything gets like filtered, drafted, all of that kind of stuff ready to go. That's a really, really important part, and one that a good EA can also do. The other one, which is less likely to be automatically what an an EA is gonna do, and so this is more of the systems integrator, is running your input through pre-agreed systems based on what actually needs to be happening in the business right now. Because the truth is, you're probably gonna give them about 50 times more information than they can do anything with in the next three months.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

Well, and this is also where we're running through those externalizing structures to help filter out the some of the downsides of having ADHD and some of our more sort of chaotic nature, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Yeah. And look, it's funny because you know, when when we're the people in Invisible Systems, when we're bringing on the systems integrator until they're on boarded, we're capturing that information. So I know exactly how much information can be given. I have been given screeds and screeds and drop boxes and information, and you know, and and even for me who's trained to do this, it can be quite intimidating to get that much information. And it can feel there's a sense of, especially if you're somebody who wants to do a good job and you don't have like a set understanding of what this process is gonna look like, it can feel a little bit like you're trying to swallow the ocean and you just don't know how. And this is where people get nervous because they're like, Oh, I feel like I'm giving my EA too much stuff, but I I'm gonna lose it and I'm not gonna remember it. So, and that's how you end up in a position where they just sort of retreat a little bit. We can be a bit all or nothing with our information. Would you say that's true, fair? I think we've both done that in the past.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

Yeah, we can be a lot.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

You said we ten voice messages this morning. No not voice messages, ten different.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

I had several ideas I wanted to buy, which you know, I had to pick the aesthetic that you were gonna appreciate. There's a new school opening up in the area.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Exciting, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

There's a house that we won't move into, but it looked cool. Yes, these are all important morning thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

There's a lot of information, and it's not just about capturing it, it's about running it through the playbook. So running it against the current project status, the threshold criteria, where we talked about like what what gets a pivot, the external change triggers, so raw creative output in, and then a pre-agreed prioritized output. A small scope change has a low bar. Developing an entirely new service option offering has maybe a medium part, depending on what it is, and then a strategic pivot has, you know, maybe an entire pre-mortem that needs to be done. So somebody who's able to say, hey, okay, I've got everything, I've organized it according to priorities, what needs to be done, what needs to be done next, and and we're gonna work through it. And actually, I will say we use prior the prioritization filter. We've adapted it for working with systems operators, and it helps a little bit with that structure.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

We've adapted it to work We might just want to say if at any point you say iterator, integrator, or operator, this is what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

I have a slight dyslexia for words sometimes, and I like lose, I struggle to say the right word, just gonna be honest. Some words just get me, and this for some reason appears to be that word, but it is a systems integrator, and I'm very excited about it. So that's the idea. The pre-agreed systems.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

The idea as well is that the founder is co-designing these systems. These are the systems that we've recommended. They're not so I mean they are managing up, but they're managing up in a pre-agreed upon way. It's you know, in the same way that we appreciate when each other reminds ourselves that we might be getting carried away. We might be being a little bit time-blind about how much time you really have left before we have to go, like that kind of thing. This is sort of a similar, a similar system, like having someone else be able to come in and be like, hey, you know how we've talked about all of these different external structures? Like, I'm gonna run this one, I'll get back to you with the results. Yeah. And so we've got this third party running those sort of threshold criteria, like running those checks and then reporting back. You don't have the founder sort of marking their own test and kind of being kind of saying, I think actually, though, this pivot is a really good idea. And I think we do just have to do it right now, and I need to go talk to the COO immediately.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Yeah, and it's it's a tricky one because obviously, you know, pivots are really important and very useful. And sometimes, you know, you've built something that you're already 80% happy with and you're looking for that hundred percent, and with that hundred percent hits, you gotta go fast. Like all of those things are true.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

If that's the case, it will pass the threshold criteria.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Exactly. That's the key.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

And so it won't just be an exciting new idea.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Yes, and it gives you a layer of confidence as well when you're moving through using this system. The way we do it, our founders is the founder meets with me, and so we just talk once a week, and that conversation becomes the the context that the systems integrator works within, which is really helpful because it feels just like a mentorship, but you're building all of the structure behind it. So it's being co built in that case between me, their systems integrator, and the CEO. The CEO.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Yeah, sorry, you're saying in the case of Your clients, you'll you'll be working with an ADHD founder.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

You'll be either helping them hire for or helping them train an existing, it's gonna say EA, but but when you're talking about co-designing it specifically, me and the founder are co-designing together alongside the systems integrator. That tends to be how

Buffering The Team From Pivots

SPEAKER_01 22:20

it works. The next thing that that they do, the systems integrator, is they report back and gate what reaches the team. So they bring the processed output back to the founder if an idea has merit, if it's something that we actually want to do, if we should override, etc.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

And then they Or if we shouldn't, because we're in week six of the project.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Or if we shouldn't.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Actually, there's a pretty high threshold for overriding when we're only when we're past half halfway point.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Exactly. Exactly. And then they can help air traffic control that information to and from uh other members of the team, and actually it's gonna come up in the next episode. This is a really, really crucial part of the position because if everything, if every person in the team is engaging with the founder, that can be incredibly overwhelming as you scale. And yes, you've got a COO who's working with the team, but sometimes you need you need that one person that the founder can just tell everything to and not have to censor.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

If something, if an idea has merit but it's it's not the right time to be pivoting the whole team, the current project, then yeah, they're coming back to you. They're coming back to the ADHD founder and saying, look, this idea does have merit, but it doesn't meet the threshold. If if we pivoted the project now, it's gonna have these consequences. It's gonna have all of these negative consequences. What I've what I'm planning on doing is flagging it for the next, you know, the next monthly direction review. I'll make sure it gets brought up again then. It doesn't make sense to do it now. And the idea's been caught, it's been captured, it's been shelled, and it's gonna be retrieved at the right time.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

But it's not sort of immediately landing on the team, and it doesn't sort of trigger that gravitational well, that sort of attention, like novelty-seeking attention gravity well, and pull everyone off in a new direction kind of thing. It's acting as a buffer, like a gravitational buffer, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

That's a funny idea.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

But yeah, I think you're right. There was one thing I also wanted to add, which isn't isn't on this list, but we've been doing it, so it is relevant. And that is that the systems integrator is also the keeper, at least initially, of the SOPs, because they are often the one who is the first port of call. Especially this is especially true on with a business that's a bit smaller, so maybe they don't have a COO, but they are the first port of call in terms of systemizing a new process. So they are the people who help build out the systems and processes documentation for something that the founder wants to do and then implement the process behind it. So it's they're not just maintaining a process, they're also learning to build and keep building these processes. Because often you need that infrastructure build at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

Yeah, they're potentially also the person investigating what would be the best software or system to implement it on.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

But it's important. It takes so much.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

Again, you'll have this sort of brief gap-filled high-level concept of like, well, this doesn't make sense. This should be done like this. We should have checks in place here. Obviously, you're not gonna be the person running those checks every every iteration. And you don't even necessarily know how you would build that system. Like, what does the software exist? Is anyone doing anything that's close to that? Are we gonna have to build it ourselves? If that's the case, does it make sense?

SPEAKER_01 25:49

The best analogy I can have for this is if you're a small business and you don't have any operators in your business yet, then this is kind of like you're in the map room and the systems operator is driving the ship, kind of just keeping it on course while you're like doing things, steering the ship. Yes, thank you. Or, you know, if you're a bigger business and maybe you have a COO, the COO is steering the ship and the systems integrator is in the bus is in the map room with you, helping to systemize the things that you are coming up with and thinking of as you're not standing over the shoulder of the COO being like, oh, what's over there?

SPEAKER_02 26:29

Go that way.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Or otherwise, like, yeah, go that way and can you figure out how you would get there. It's a teammate with you as you grow.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

Yeah, it's and it's also keeping the not now visible, sort of acting as glasses, I think is the analogy we've used in the past. Again, this is probably a little bit closer to what a standard EA would do. It is, and we'll talk about this next, but it is possible that you will end up, depending on the scale of the business, with a EA that either works alongside a systems integrator or even an EA that works below the systems integrator, that you can just work directly with them. They can pass things down and delegate downwards.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

The cool thing about having a systems integrator who's properly set up in your business is that they can grow alongside you, which is unusual because a lot of the time, you know, these roles come up at certain times. You know, oh, you've reached this stage of business. Now you need a marketing director, you know, all that kind of stuff. But with a systems integrator, what tends to happen is if you are a pre-team or a very small team, you hire somebody who handles those EA level tasks. So they do the full stack of what we just discussed. So diary, inbox, logistics,

How The Role Scales With Growth

SPEAKER_01 27:41

but also what's coming up, but also meeting notes, but also, and they kind of like do all of that stuff. Then if you have a small team, but you don't have a COO at this point, then they will probably sit on top of the team between you and the team. So they'll take on kind of light COO type functions, assigning work, implementing systems, keeping track of when everything is, coordinating across people, they're kind of building that operation system alongside the founder, but they're not they're not officially like a CEO role. And so then when you have a team with a COO, the systems integrator very crucially sits between the CEO and the COO. And this is what we talked about in the last episodes. If you don't have this person, if nobody's sitting between the CEO and the COO, then the COO is just getting hammered on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_02 28:37

With every exciting new idea.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

With every exciting new idea, and it's very it's usually not something that they're well equipped to handle when they're also handling an entire team. It's not that they can't do it.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

Yeah, and unless you've given them the express job of running sort of external systems, running sort of sanity checks, like threshold criteria, et cetera, et cetera, then they're potentially just going to start implementing the sort of new direction you're thinking about or wanting to go down without giving sufficient pushback. And so this is about building a very intentional pushback mechanism.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Yeah. And it's not that they can't do that job, it's more about burnout. So if you're a CO and you're listening to this and you're like, I could do that, absolutely, without a doubt, you could totally do that. But we're thinking about your health and you know, you it's a lot to do to manage an entire business, especially if we have a big business. If you have like 30 people on your team and you're managing all of the jobs and systems and forecasting that is involved in that, you're trying to optimize systems, you're trying to, at this point, you're trying to be the person who like helps with the building, and you're still getting those Slack messages at like 11 p.m. that's like, hey, have you ever thought about this? Like, it can be a lot.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

The COO and and the team that they're managing are really wanting structured output. They're not wanting all of the creative chaos.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Yeah. They want enough of the creative chaos for the business to keep its spark, the thing that made it good. Like the the the genius zone of the founder being done by the founder or some.

SPEAKER_02 30:17

But filtered, filtered by the systems integrator.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Exactly. It's a fil it's a filtering process. Like so many things we do and make, it's it's a filtering process. And then at scale, um, which is quite exciting uh space to be in, the systems integrator may actually have a standard EA beneath them for routine tasks. Because you might think to yourself, okay, at some point I don't necessarily want to keep ordering my shampoo from my systems integrator. And you can't you can have them have an EA who does that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

I imagine at scale you probably Well, you probably have a house manager. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

I agree. But at scale, they can manage those people. So again, it gives you a very limited number if you're a founder of people that you're talking to, and everything is kind of being managed around you. And that's that's kind of the dream, right? That's where you're looking to get to.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

It is still, though, I think a better example might be sort of managing the emails day-to-day versus planning out implementing a new system, you know, looking into different software options, talking with the support teams to try to figure out what would be the best fits. At some point, it'll be a good idea for them to have someone to offload a lot of the more routine day-to-day stuff that and it can still be elevated back up to them if needed.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Exactly. Exactly. So that's the cool thing about having this system's integrator role is they are able to grow with you in the business and be that structure. And honestly, you probably grow a lot faster when you have somebody like this.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

There's nothing special about a role that allows someone to grow through more. I mean, the the the role is still the same thing, but there's no there's not necessarily any reason why the person will come with you the whole way. You might have to hire someone more competent at different levels. I think overpromising on this

Failure Modes That Break The System

SPEAKER_02 32:00

role, somehow magically allowing someone to scale all the way through with you isn't necessarily true. I think you always hope that that's going to be true.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

Yeah, okay. That's fair. Yeah, that's fair. I think I think what I mean is like as opposed to a CEO or a director of operations where you're sort of hoping that you sort of have to get to a certain level in your business before you can hire that kind of person.

SPEAKER_02 32:22

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

This is somebody you can hire at the beginning, and then if they're good and if they want to grow with you, they can scale all the way up.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

Yeah, I think another way of thinking about it would be this these are sort of ADHD founder-specific roles, similar to how with the COO you'll often want to pair like an integrated COO with a visionary founder.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Yeah. Why is this role different? Not about admin competence. It's about a specific capability. They do need to understand ADHD founder patterns. And by the way, I only do this for like 20 people at a time. So if you are interested, if you're listening to this and you are interested, I think I have maybe 15 spots left. So you can just click below and DM me. Let's have a conversation. We'll do a business build-out, see if it's a good fit. If not, you're most welcome to take our 90-day plan, put it in AI, and do the best you can because we want you to get a systems implementer regardless. So, in terms of this role, yeah, they need to understand the ADHD founder patterns. They do need to understand they're working with an ADHD founder and what that means. They need to respect that and you know, be happy to work alongside somebody who has ADHD or or is a founder in general, because a lot of us have ADHD.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

I think a lot of people enjoy the excitement of that role though.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

A lot of people do. I'm always surprised by it and appreciative of it. And they need, yeah, a delegation mirror. So they need to they do need to work with someone who can trust. There's a couple of different things that we really want to hit in terms of the neurological patterns of ADHD that can be supported by a systems integrator.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

I think the first episode we did in this series was time blindness. So that's sort of external deadline visibility, time stamping briefs, surfacing not now deadlines before they become crises. We covered the brief gap, so running brief templates with sort of mandatory fields and having sort of reactive brief, ensuring that we're having those reactive briefs where we're actually reacting to something real, capturing all the information from that, holding the templates, chasing the gaps.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Yeah, the brief gap was really useful. I find that I use the conversation about how to surface things, how to talk about things with founders literally every day. We also talked about your classic ADHD estimation problems. So forecasting, do you need a buffer? What does that look like? These are all things that are super.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Forecasting based on like history, like referencing previous projects to make the forecasting more accurate.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Exactly. All things that your your systems integrators should probably, well, should definitely know how to do if you want them to be able to do this.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

Then we also talked about And all things that if you think about it, there's no way the ADHD founder is actually going to be doing that.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

No, well, literally it's in the description in the research, you know, if you're time blind, for example, that's not going away. Like you can't, even if people take medication in some cases, they didn't remove time blindness. So this is something that's very specific.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

Yeah. And not- That was the study where even when the returning even when the people returning were no longer clinically diagnosable with ADHD, the the underlying sort of time blindness phenomenon was still there, was still measurable.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Then we talked a little bit about decision avoidance. So the struggles that we make, we have with decision making, which is actually as as well important for a systems integrated to understand like why decisions are a struggle.

SPEAKER_02 35:49

Yeah, but then also running those external solutions. So like keeping the decision logs, um, escalating anything that's been left open too long.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

And then and then we talked about yeah, perfectionism, super, super important, why we delegate it all.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

So attention, gravity, and idea volatility. So yeah, being that idea quarantine, um, which is probably the thing we've harped on most this episode, running the threshold for pivots, being the buffer between the founder and the team.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

As always, let's go through some failure modes. What happens if you don't do this? So the first thing is let's say you don't do this because you hire a standard EA and you just say something vague like, I want you to start managing up, which by the way, people hate. I've heard that before. People really don't like being randomly told to manage up with no context. So, you know, you get someone that really excited, you say, I just need you to get to the next level, I need you to learn how to manage up. And they're not getting what you're putting down. They have no idea what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 36:46

Yeah, I mean, fair enough. That's an incredibly sort of vague directive.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

It happens. It happens.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

You need a specific like SOP for how to do that. Like, here's the system, here's what we're trying to avoid, here's what I'm acknowledging that I am prone to doing, and this is what I want you to always do with new ideas so that I don't end up Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

But so this is a real struggle then, you know. It's like you end up in a position where they want to do a good job, assuming that they're, you know, want to do a good job and they can't, and you guys just keep like hitting that wall until inevitably they tend to quit and go find somebody who isn't gonna tell them to manage up vaguely with increasing levels of frustration. The second failure mode is designing the thresholds but not honoring them. This is complicated because things do need iteration. So there's no like, we've done it, and a lot of people are like, show me the system and then I want it to be perfect. It's not about making the perfect system, but if the system requires you to put tasks in the inbox and you don't put tasks in the inbox, you're not honoring the system.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

Well, I would also say I would say the the more crucial failure mode there is when you bypass it. So if you're bypassing the system's integrator and going direct to the COO and telling them about some new idea that you have, this isn't gonna hold. Like obviously, you need to honor the fact that you've set up this filtering process and this buffer zone on purpose.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

There's limited guardrails, but there are a few guardrails that you need to honor. And if you don't want to do them, you can always discuss it, but it has to be part of the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

Ideally, this is it will be tricky if you have like a good relationship with your CEO and you're talking with them a lot, then Well, you know, people on podcasts have that and they say, like, save it for the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

You just have to do that, but like save it for the board meeting.

SPEAKER_02 38:33

The CEO CEO running away being like, tell her.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

And then, yeah, similar to what you said, the other failure mode is hiring for an energy match. Oh my god, please do not hire someone because you're like, we can just talk about ideas together forever. Like, I can almost promise you that person is not the right person for you. They're probably a little bit too flexible and not system systems enough.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

You could hire that person to help you with idea generation and then you could both sit behind a systems integrator. 100%. But definitely they shouldn't be in the role of being the sanity check, the buffer zone.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

No, absolutely, absolutely not. And then, similar to what you said, the other failure mode is letting the CEO absorb this all instead. And being like, they're amazing, let's just give them more stuff, and they just like slowly get away from the stuff. This is fine, just ignore the uh the this is fine meme, just in the background, and the person that's on fire is your CEO. Yeah, we don't want to do that. The structural avoidance, the fact that we like to avoid structure, this is a neurological thing, it's ADHD, it's totally fine. I do it, Robbie does it, look at us, we're surviving, we're all good. It's fine. It's an ADHD thing. There's other strengths that you have. So we say it's neurological, yeah, not motivational. Also, the other ones, yeah, the COO and your team, if you have them, they're doing a great job. They have a system, they have a job, they're doing things. Their job is not to manage you or manage your systems, which is one of the reasons people get really frustrated when they try and get someone to do this and then they don't do it because that wasn't their job ever. And then the third one is yeah, the systems integrator is a complicated role. If you just hire an EEA and you say, I need you to go to the next level with me, and you just like mysteriously walk out of the room, like they're not gonna know what that means. There is no magic book. There might be a few books, but like they don't know what you mean, what to read.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

You could potentially tell them to listen

Closing And Next Steps

SPEAKER_02 40:22

to the last seven, fourteen episodes. It's not Look, you'll have to find the right episodes.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

It is, you know, the key really is that it it's a complicated thing, but it's it's a very, very useful thing, and you can do it and you can train for it.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

Don't try to brute force it, external, like use external structures to fix it.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. If you liked it, leave us a five star review. It helps other people learn more about us. And thank you so much to our wonderful team for making us sound good, look good. We couldn't do it without you.