Right People, Right Work: Scaling Leadership in High-Velocity Organizations
What is Working Genius?
Patrick Lencioni’s Working Genius is a practical framework that maps the six stages of work – Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity – to reveal how ideas move from concept to creation. Within 10X CEO®, it’s one of our core frameworks for helping CEOs and leadership teams build clarity, alignment, and momentum in high-velocity organizations. Far more than an assessment, Working Genius functions as a productivity system integrated into our coaching, leadership design, and planning processes – bringing structure to how work flows from inception to outcome, aligning leadership energy, and accelerating execution with less friction.
Leaders often find that certain projects feel effortless and energizing, while others drain focus and motivation. Working Genius helps explain why – revealing how each person’s natural strengths either drive or deplete their energy.
Each person leans toward two stages – their Geniuses – where they gain energy and fulfillment. Two stages are Competencies, areas they can perform well but that don’t sustain and drive their energy. The final two are Frustrations, where energy usually drains faster and the work may feel boring.
At 10X CEO®, this framework gives CEOs and teams a shared language for how work actually moves through their organizations– revealing where energy flows, stalls, or burns out. It creates instant clarity on where teams excel, where friction exists, and how to move faster with less effort.
As businesses evolve toward workflow-based operating models, Working Genius serves as a bridge between human energy and business systems – turning personal strengths into accelerated performance. During coaching and off-site sessions, we use it to identify friction that data alone can’t explain – the human dynamics that either accelerate or slow down growth.
The Impact
Faster decisions with less debate
Clearer delegation and accountability
Energized and productive meetings → less burnout, more flow
Improved execution rates and overall success
The Three Organizational Chasms
High-velocity organizations often face predictable drop-offs in execution when specific geniuses are missing.
Missing Wonder—The Vision Gap
Ideas lack because no one is creating or exploring new possibilities.
The Discernment Chasm—The Decision Gap
Teams overanalyze and hesitate to act on ideas.
The Velocity Chasm— The Execution Gap
Completion stalls due to lack of galvanizing, enablement, or tenacity.
Each chasm limits organizational productivity, and when teams learn their natural balance, they regain momentum quickly.
How 10X CEO® Uses Working Genius
At 10X CEO®, we use Working Genius as part of a broader organizational clarity system – used to re-engineer how CEOs lead, delegate, and design their teams. Our Certified Facilitators lead structured sessions that translate assessment insights into actionable shifts that immediately improve execution and workflow.
In practice:
Facilitated Team Debriefs: Interactive sessions where we map each leader’s geniuses, competencies, and frustrations to pinpoint where energy is overused or underutilized.
Hiring and Recruiting Strategies: Build balanced teams by hiring for missing geniuses and aligning roles to strengths.
Applied Insights: Structure meetings, delegate ownership, and design cross-functional work so ideas move fluidly from Wonder to Tenacity.
System Integration: Embed Working Genius into accountability charts, meeting cadence, and decision making– so clarity becomes part of how the company runs, not a one-time exercise.
Ongoing Coaching Support: Our coaches use these insights to help CEOs assess and strengthen leadership bottlenecks, uplevel their leadership, and intentionally surround themselves with the right people doing the right work.
The outcome: Meetings get shorter, decisions get clearer, and teams begin operating in their zones of genius instead of grinding through burnout.
10X CEO® x Working Genius In Action
One high growth organization reached a point where execution had slowed despite having a strong and capable leadership team. The CEO noticed the executive team was stuck in decision loops, meetings felt heavy, and projects lagged- despite everyone working hard and having immense talent.
Through a 10X CEO®-led Working Genius session, the organization discovered they were heavy in Discernment and Invention, but lacking in Galvanizing and Enablement. In other words, they loved refining ideas, but no one was naturally geared to rally people around decisions or drive projects through to completion. With this insight discovered, 10X CEO® helped them restructure meetings, improve workflow, communication, and utilization across different team members to improve how the company runs as a whole.
What CEOs Experience
CEOs often say Working Genius gives language to what they’ve been feeling – that “A-ha” moment when clarity replaces friction and work finally moves at the right pace.
Typical Outcomes:
Team velocity increases
Delegation and ownership become clear
Meetings regain focus and purpose
Emotional friction between executives drops
