Summer’s tasks center around manifestation, including making sure that you make critical choices about which plants to nurture and which to let go of as things start to grow and take up space and resources. The focus of your decisions shifts from what new ideas to introduce to which new sprouts should be cultivated and nurtured.
The summer ends when plants begin to be harvestable. In business, this means that we move to the fall when we begin to realize the benefit of our work in consistent, long-term revenue or other results.
Summer Roles
Explorers begin to focus on the integration of new innovations into the whole of an organization and begin scouting for the next round of ideas for iterating or pivoting.
Planners coordinate the process of selecting which ideas move forward and which have to be let go, especially as it relates to managing funding and work effort.
Energizers help the team stay focused on the end goal and support the team through the arc of difficult decisions and challenging integrations with the larger organization.
Connectors map current members of the team to the departments and partners needed to scale innovations up, and begin to seek new opportunities for team members who had been mostly focused on launch.
Experts work with producers and others to solidify complex designs and systems.
Optimizers rapidly iterate on design to increase reliability and profitability.
Producers churn out the work needed to scale innovations.
Coaches help new members of the team orient themselves and help existing members of the team adapt to the increasing complexity and decreasing freedom of the process, or help them move to new roles.