Visionary/Integrator – Side by Side?
Today, I want to respond to a question. We get a lot of questions and there was a good one that I thought I could help clarify for others who may share it. The user asked: I love your videos and the complete model. As a Visionary looking for an Integrator, they are super helpful. I wanted to show all of your videos to anyone that I’d hire but there is maybe something that turns me off. Why do you keep drawing the Visionary above the integrator in the org chart? Maybe there’s a reason I don’t see but I think your videos will be a lot more helpful to recruit Integrators if you drew them at the same level. Here’s how I understand the question, and it’s not the first time I’ve had someone ask. Some folks are seeing the Visionary above the Integrator. Maybe they should be side-by-side? That seems to be what he’s curious about. To clarify, we don’t prescribe an org chart. We teach an Accountability Chart™. A key difference between an org chart and an Accountability Chart™ is that the latter doesn’t pay attention to levels. It doesn’t heed any kind of a political hierarchy. The objective of the Accountability Chart™ is to create absolute clarity around what needs to get done, who’s going to do it, and how accountability will flow on the chart to make sure it does happen. As long as you’re not concerned with levels, the fact that the Visionary appears above the Integrator simply indicates that the Visionary is also responsible for holding that Integrator accountable. In turn, the Visionary is being held accountable by the Owner’s Box™. We have to call out that single line. In order for it to truly work, we need a straight line, eyeball-to-eyeball accountability. There is no opportunity for any confusion around that. Otherwise, it will be less effective. Hope that makes sense and adds some clarity for those of you who may have been confused about this. Three key points: Let go of levels, titles, and political hierarchy. Get crystal clear on what needs to get done, who is going to do it, and how that accountability will flow. Keep sending in those great questions. We also have a monthly call inside Rocket Fuel University that helps address these types of questions. Until next time, Go ROCKET! Cheers,Mark
A Visionary Check-Up
By Gino Wickman As a visionary, the better you know thyself and stay in your sweet spot, the happier you’ll be, the more your company will grow, and the less chaos you will create. Mark and I worked hard for more than two years writing Rocket Fuel and creating a clear definition of the role of the visionary (and integrator). In my new project, Leap, I’m devoting energy toward helping entrepreneurs-in-the-making get a huge jump-start on taking their entrepreneurial leap. These are the future visionaries of the world. As a part of the project, I’ve further simplified the definition of the DNA of a visionary entrepreneur. A visionary entrepreneur possesses six essential traits. Here they are in a nutshell: Visionary Passionate Problem Solver Driven Risk Taker Responsible The point of Leap is to help entrepreneurs-in-the-making determine if they possess the six essential traits and if they’re entrepreneurs-in-the-making—future visionaries. This work made me think of you, and I thought I’d give you an opportunity to do a little “check-up” on yourself as a visionary. Please take a minute to think about these traits and confirm that you’re staying in your sweet spot, fully being a visionary and still exhibiting the traits that helped get you and your company to where it is. Let it serve as a check-up. Make sure that you’re exhibiting these traits, in the following ways: Visionary: Is your vision still crystal clear? Do you have an absolute pulse on your customers/clients? Are you still seeing around corners, being innovative, and connecting the dots? Passionate: Are you still passionate about your business, your product/service, and your customers/clients? Are you perpetuating that passion throughout your organization? Problem Solver: Are you creatively solving the big problems your company is facing? Are you pushing through setbacks, barriers, and obstacles? Driven: Do you still have the internal fire, the competitive edge, and the urgency? Risk Taker: Are you making the tough decisions that need to be made? Do you avoid over analyzing? Are you keeping your rebellious nature and not fearing failure? Responsible: Are you blaming no one and always looking in the mirror when casting blame? I also urge you to take this assessment to confirm that you’re at 90+. Please stay 100 percent in your personal sweet spot. You owe it to your people, your company, and your integrator (if you have one). Stay out of managing people, details, and follow-through. Be you and let your freak flag fly! If you want to help an entrepreneur-in-the-making get a huge jump-start in their life, order them a copy of my new book coming out in October, Leap: Do You Have What It Takes to Become an Entrepreneur?, or send them to the Leap website. Thanks for your support. Stay focused, Gino
Owner/Employee Rules of the Game
Today, I’m talking to you owners. With Visionaries and Integrators, we find that almost all the time, the Visionary is actually an owner in the business. Almost half the time, the Integrator is an owner as well. As owners, there are some special things you need to think about in terms of how you think about your role as owner, and, potentially, your role as an employee in the business. Imagine a dark solid line above the Accountability Chart™ and a box above that. That’s the Owner’s Box™. That’s where owners meet and work together on major owner specific decisions. Really, that’s where you’re going to have your needs met as an owner. There are two entitlements that you have as an owner. One is you that have a right to your share of the profits. The other is that you’re really the ultimate decision authority. You’re going to have your vote on some major decisions, or however that mechanism works for your group. You’re going to have your input and decision authority there. That’s it. What you’ll notice is missing from that list is that you don’t necessarily have the right to be an employee in the business. As owners, you’re focused on the long term and greater good of the organization. You’re trying to put the structure in place that will get us to where we’re trying to go. You want to have the right seats in place and each seat will drive what the right person is going to look like in that seat. If you’re not that right person, you have an obligation to go out and find somebody who is the right person to drive this organization towards the interests of the greater good. If you are the right person, then we need you to step in and fill that seat. I just want you to really understand that being an owner doesn’t give you the right to be an employee. Imagine someone who owns a baseball team. Owning the team doesn’t give them the right to take the field. If you are the right person and you’re going to play in one of those seats, there are a couple of ground rules that I want you to keep in mind. Number one is that you must be fully accountable, just like anybody else that you would put in that seat. Number two is that it’s important that you set the example. Be what you want to see from all the other employees in the organization. It’s also important that you don’t play the owner card. Don’t throw down the owner “trump card” anytime that you don’t want to do something or want the rules to be different for you than they are for everyone else. Imagine, using our baseball analogy, that the catcher just thought it was a hassle to throw the ball back to the pitcher after every pitch. We’d have to stop and wait for the first or third baseman to come
Integrator or Implementer?
Today, I want to talk to you about a topic that I’ve seen happening too much really. There’s some confusion out there and I want to do my best to try to clear up some terminology. Simply stated, Integrators are not the same thing as Implementers. Now, the words are really similar and I understand how people get confused and start using them interchangeably. I want to clear up how they’re different. You hear me talk about Integrators all the time. They’re the ones who are going to take the ideas from the Visionary and make them real. They drive execution. They pull together all the different functions in the organization and really get us marching down the path of making the vision happen. And there’s a lot of special ways that they work with the Visionary. That’s what Integrators are. Hopefully, you’re crystal clear really on what that word means. Although the name sounds very similar to Integrator, Implementers are very different. In the context of the things we talk about here, the Implementer is all about implementing an operating system into the company. That’s really all that word means. When I say operating system, I mean whatever operating system you might decide to use at your company. You’ve probably heard us talk a lot about EOS®. That’s one we often think of. We have a lot of friends in the EOS® community and a very close relationship there. It’s a great system. It could be that operating system, but if not, the same idea still applies. Who implements the operating system in your company? Going back to the Integrator, one of the core accountabilities of the Integrator is the operating system. But what I want you to be clear on is that owning doesn’t necessarily mean doing. The Integrator owning the operating system simply means they’re accountable for making sure that we have an operating system and that it’s being implemented and working well. It’s doing what it needs to do. As far as the implementation of the operating system, this can be somebody that you bring in from the outside. It might be be a professional Implementer. EOS® Worldwide has great professional Implementers that can help you implement that operating system. This could also be another person in your organization, someone on the team who is mastering the tools and elements of your operating system. They may be the implementation resource. Could it be the Integrator? Maybe. I just don’t want you to think that by default those two are overlapping and the same. The Integrator executes the vision, makes it real, and pulls all the pieces together. Implementers implement the operating system. They work together to help you get where you need to go. Three key things to wrap this one up: 1. The Integrator and the Implementer are not the same thing. They don’t mean the same thing and have different roles and different focuses.2. The Integrator owns the operating system.3. Owning does not necessarily
