Mark C. Winters uses the 'A Few Good Men' courtroom scene to show why visionaries and integrators fail to understand each other. A Stanford study found communication breakdowns cost teams dearly. Winters shares his own miscommunication and argues visionaries must confirm their message while integrators need to actively extract and translate ideas for the team.
Hi, everybody. It's Mark C. Winters. And I really love the movie A Few Good Men. There's a scene in that movie where the character Jack Nicholson plays is on the stand Colonel Jessup, and the Tom Cruise character, Lieutenant Caffey, is interrogating him, and he senses that he's just about got him backed in a corner. And Jessup says, are we clear? And Cathy says, yes, sir. And Jessup says, again, are we clear? And Kaffi says, crystal. And I love that scene, and I love just the whole tone of that. And, you know, there's sort of a search for clarity that we have going on always between the visionary and the integrator. Now, in that movie, it's a whole different situation, but the question is, how do we get crystal clear? How do we get there? I've talked in an earlier video about the study they did at Stanford where they had some students tapping out, you know, a song and had the other students trying to guess what it is. And this dynamic of how difficult it is sometimes when something's really clear in your head to get it across the other person. I encourage you to go back and look at that other video we did to get into more detail on that. And today, I really want to tell you, it's sort of another confessional. I've had a situation like this. So in my role as visionary, we had a recent situation where there was something that was just crystal clear in my head. I mean, I could see it plain as day, and we talked about it, and I thought that I had conveyed exactly what was in my head. And then when it came out the other end, it was something different. And from the visionary's perspective, I just have to tell you how frustrating that is. I mean, I feel this frustrating. It's like, ah, it's so obvious to me why is it so hard for other people to see that? So, visionaries, I hope that resonates with you. And for you integrators, I just want you to recognize that. Recognize that they feel a lot of frustration in this challenge around communication. Now, along with that, I've got to own it. So in this case, it's my fault. It's my fault that that wasn't communicated clearly. I've got to do better. I've got to do more to make sure that what I'm saying is coming across and being received by my integrator and in turn by the rest of the team. And so knowing that, it's really frustrating. The integrator's got to help the integrator. Is a huge piece of the solution. So they've got to help us because clarity is not optional. We must be clear. And we've got to do as much validation, as much confirmation as we can and never assume anything. Now, some of you are old enough to maybe have seen the original Bad News Bears movie with Walter Matthaus. So this little exercise, this little joke may hit home with you. I actually read recently that this came from Abbott and Costello, so it's even older than the Bad News Bears. But we just can't assume things. We've got to make sure that we're clear. We got to make sure that we're on the same page. So use those same page meetings to get clear. It's not optional. Integrator, if you will do this, if you will help the visionary pull it out of their brain in a way that you can understand and then in turn translate that to the rest of the team, it is so valuable, so freeing, so important and impactful for the organization. We've just got to do it. Okay, so three key things to wrap this one up today. Visionary, you got to do your part. You've got to make sure that you are getting your message across and making sure that it's received. Point two, clarity is not optional. We've got to be clear. We must achieve clarity in our message, in our communication of what we're trying to convey. And number three, integrators, if you will do this, you can create so much value for your visionary and and in turn for your organization. Thanks for watching. Today at Rocket Fuel Ventures, we're all about creating the most powerful visionary integrator duos on the planet. And we do that by helping you crystallize what it means to be a visionary and an integrator. So you can understand if that concept can help you and if you decide it can, to get connected with your complementary counterpart and then finally maximize that relationship to make it everything it can be to help you take your company to the next level. So if you want more rocket fuel, please check out our website@rocketfuelnow.com and that's where you can sign up for the weekly videos like this. Be sure you're getting these on a regular basis. You can also take the assessments so you can understand as a visionary or as an integrator, where your strengths lie and what the shape is of your two piece puzzles that can help you find that complementary counterpart. And finally, of course, read the book Rocket Fuel and keep those great reviews coming. So until next time, go Rocket.
