How and Where to Find Your Integrator: Mark C. Winters Pt. 2

Welcome back to Contractor Evolution. This is Benji and today is part two of a two part conversation with Mark C. Winters, author of Rocket Fuel and the foremost expert on visionary integrated relationships. If you haven't listened to part one yet, go do that now. It will be the prior episode to this in whatever feed you're currently on. If you have heard part one. We're gonna pick up essentially where we left off last time and go deeper on a few things where visionaries should search for the right integrator, both inside their organization and outside their organization. We'll talk about how to quantify your visionary integrator fit using assessments and your core values. We'll get into the five rules you need to follow to maintain a healthy VI relationship over the long run. And lastly, we'll talk about what to do when visionaries, or integrators for that matter, outgrow one another, which is part of the story too. Now, a final note. If you're a Breakthrough Academy member and this conversation resonates you, this week's, last week's, please don't run to your coach as soon as you finish this pod and yell, I need an integrator and all my problems will be solved. These relationships, as we discussed today, take a long time to get right and the systems you're implementing right now are exactly what your integrator will need to be effective when you do find them anyway. So by all means, bring this up with your coach, but keep doing what you're doing too. I hope you like part two of my conversation with Mark C. Winters. You're watching Contractor Evolution where we unpack the systems, tactics and skills you need to take your fast growing contracting business to the next level. You're here to learn what it takes to scale up, work less and increase profitability. You've come to the right place. Stay tuned to learn what separates the new breed of contractor from the old school. And welcome to your ultimate guide on the business of contracting. Okay, so one of the things that like everyone is going to be asking is where do I find one? And I have a feeling you probably spend a lot of time answering this question for people through your work. You organize the thinking and I'll just set this up well because this is sort of how it's discussed in Rocket Fuel. There's, you know, there's really two places inside the organization or outside the organization where you can find an integrator. Let's talk about inside the organization first and then we'll go outside. If you are a business that farm raises Talent and you are oriented to develop people into higher and higher roles. Can you maybe talk about the certain, the very specific traits this visionary leader would be looking for within certain people on their team? What are they exhibiting, what are they showing? And do they happen to exist? Do they tend to exist in certain roles or certain divisions within the business?

Okay, so there's a ton of different directions we can go with this question, this topic. And so we're starting, it sounds like from the visionary asking the question, where do we find one? Yes. If I'm looking internally, you know, some things to think about. But the. There's a couple of fundamental things I want to clear up.

Okay.

So the first one is this question of, you know, finding the other. It actually can originate from both sides. So the integrator kind of has their version of this question too that we can get to. If you want to, we'll get to that. From the visionary side, it really starts with, with self assessment. So it's, you know, first, before I try to think about what I'm looking for, I've got to look at what I need. So go back to that three piece puzzle. Okay, so if I've got again the three pieces, so the two pieces of the visionary and integrator, the, the one piece, that's the business and these three pieces have to fit together. Well, if I'm the visionary, okay, I got to really understand me. I've got to understand what this shape of my edge looks like. And I need to understand for the integrator, the missing integrator piece I'm trying to find in this case, I need to understand what the shape of that integrator edge to the business looks like. Then with that missing piece. If I know those two things, I know the shape of what I'm looking for. I know what we need that I'm looking for. So in the self assessment for the visionary go things like doing the wish list, personality profiles, different kinds, Colby culture index, strength finders, disc, whatever. Just things to kind of understand who I am, how I'm wired. We go through that exercise we talked about with how much integrator does this business need? And that begins to kind of shape what I'm looking for. At the core are all the things that we talked about before. They must be the shining example of what we call leadership, management and accountability. They have to set the tone for the entire organization for that. So they got to be great at it. They got to love having the hard conversation, asking the hard question. I mean, not just, you know, do it, because they have to, but they just, again, it has to be in there, in their wiring, follow through, details, execution, all of that stuff is kind of core to any of them. But then around that, you know, how are they going to be able to work with a vision like me? How are they matching up with the integrator spectrum that we have in our company in terms of skills? Are they a project manager or are they a leader of a large scale organization? Which seems like kind of their. Where they're at, the experience, the training, the expertise that they bring that goes with that. So that's how we back into it to figure out what we're looking for. Does that make sense?

It makes total sense. Would you make the case that my question is maybe going in the wrong direction? Perhaps this is naive, but I'm going like, well, are they really talented project managers or hey, if you have a really strong office manager who's good at attention to detail, do you just pluck them up and train them for two years and poof, you have an integrator, Would you make the case that that's a little bit too black and white or too simplistic of you towards this?

I would say it this way, it's structure first, people second. So clarify what you need first and then go see if you can find it rather than looking at what you've got and thinking, if I can work with that. Because here's the other trap that people run into is I'm a, I'm a visionary sitting in the integrator seat and I'm hating life because I'm working my tail off. I'm 90% of the stuff I'm doing I don't like. And I maybe again, I'm not great at it. And so I got to get out of the seat. This is killing me. I got to get an integrator. All right, you can fog this mirror, right? And I can see you're already here and you're not going to cost me a lot and I can give you a little bit of training and whatever and let's just put you in there, see if it works.

I've seen this happen so many times, Mark. I've seen this especially in our little, especially in our little world. I've seen in particular a really strong administrator who happens to show the visionary a few organized spreadsheets, a base level competence for the CRM, some good inbound phone call stuff. And they go, there's my person. A year and a half later, they've been elevated up the ranks of the org chart perhaps too quickly. And now they're in a complete and total state of overwhelm going, I actually didn't ask for this. And that is a very. Those can lead to some very painful off boardings.

Yeah. And the pain on the front end that they were experiencing when they made that call creates 10 times as much pain on the back end and for the rest of the organization. So it's making it visible for people to see that, for visionaries to see that, and just really pleading for them to take the time to be thoroughly about what you're gonna do, figure out what you need and then be intentional about how you go looking for it. Whether internal or external, please look at more than one candidate. You know, you didn't just, I mean, maybe that one that happens to be there right in front of you is the best one in the world. But odds are, seems like a long shot. Seems like a long shot. Right. And so at least have some, some good options to compare to and then really, you know, work the process. You know another thing, Benji, that, that we strongly advocate is this an assessment, the crystallizer. And so take that visionaries. It'll give you a visionary score and an integrator score. Any candidate that you're going to consider for this role, have them take that and it's going to give you some insight. It's not the end all, be all, but it's a great data point that moves you down the path of, you know, is this person the right fit for me? Is this person the right fit for us? And are they going to be able to do what we need them to do to get us where we're trying to go?

So, okay, perhaps this is a better question about the inside the organization angle. And then we'll look at the outside and maybe, I don't know if you've done this in any of your businesses. Perhaps you've seen this done well in businesses you work with through eos. But if an entrepreneur has someone talented in their company, but perhaps young and inexperienced, I'm talking sort of still from the visionary. And they see perhaps someone that maybe has, they do the test and they show maybe some early signs of integrator orientation. How should a visionary nurture and develop this person into readiness considering the fact that that visionary may not have the skill set to do that nurturing for that person. Have you ever seen this done exceptionally well where they farm raise someone into an integrated role?

I have in fact in a construction business. And so somebody who basically started off as a Project manager and then to, you know, project director and ultimately into the, the integrator role. And so the, the process I've seen is just a slow, over time, giving them more and having lots of conversations without going, here's the seat about, hey, here's something I'm thinking about, you know, and I no promises, but I think this might be a possibility. And so would kind of like to start having, you know, it's almost like mentoring. And mentoring, frankly, is something that a visionary might be very good at. Different than holding them accountable, right, because they're just kind of talking about them. They're talking about their experiences, they're talking about how they work, they're talking about the things that they want, the things that they see. And so it's more of a teacher kind of role, if that makes sense. Slow and steady, slow and steady. And again, just kind of giving them more and more and more until they break or top out, or they may thrive and keep coming down the path until ultimately they make it all the way there.

And if someone truly does not have the person inside the organization and they need to go to the outer world, what have you seen leads to success there? When a visionary has to hunt for this person, search for this person.

So there's a few different ways. One is just leverage your network. So first, assuming you've done all the internal work first, meaning I understand the shape of what I'm looking for because I understand myself and I understand our business. I know what I'm looking for. So once I know what I'm looking for, you know, first level is leverage your circle of reach, whatever that is, you know, whether that's, you know, LinkedIn, let people know, hey, I'm looking for an integrator. Here's a job description. We have an integrator job description that is available, you know, that you can use, that generally tells. Here's what an integrator does in case you're talking to somebody that doesn't know. Although more and more people know, they know what that term is, they know what it is, what it is. So just letting it, anybody and everybody that you know, be aware that, hey, I'm looking for one. We see tons of people that actually that's how they find them. That's how they get their candidate. Second layer from that is, you know, fractional integrators. So this is a term that, you know, is sort of really an offering that kind of evolved after we wrote the book where people began to offer integrator services on a non full Time basis. So much like you can get a fractional CFO or a fractional marketing resource, you know, anything like that. It's somebody that's got a higher level of capability set than what you may be ready to bring in full time. Or maybe your business doesn't need all that full time yet, but you can engage with somebody like that and they start the process, they start to work with you a little bit. And a lot of times what happens in that situation is they kind of get you started. The visionary kind of begins to feel what it's like to work with somebody in that role. The team starts to feel what it's like to work with somebody in that role and they like it. Things start to happen and sometimes it's even it's like dating. So, you know, we start to work together and you know, I'm with you a couple of days a week or whatever and you realize, man, I really like having this person around here a couple days a week. You know, I wonder, could we maybe we make this a full time thing and it kind of evolves to more. So we see that happen. So that's another path. And then the third path externally is a recruiter. And so there are recruiters that have specialized on making this match on integrator search. And so it's probably the most expensive way, but they're going to be thorough, they're going to be faster. Again, you're not out there doing integrator searches all the time. They are. So you get the benefit of working with somebody that really knows what they're doing. So that's the right option for a lot of people. And we're frankly, Benji, this is a space that we're spending more and more time on as eos worldwide where we want to offer help. And we're getting really close to being able to put some offerings in the market where if you are looking for your integrator match, we're going to have some options for you because that's what we see too. Somebody reads the book Rocket fuel, somebody gives it to a visionary, they read the first chapter, it's all about them. And they love that chapter. And then they read the next chapter, right? And it's about the integrator. They're like, you know what, that sounds pretty good. I think that could help me. And then they say, where do I get one? And then that's when it kind of gets hard. But the other thing I just got to make a plea for don't give up and don't wait. So get out there and start looking if this is what you want. Because the other thing we learned is the ratio in the world is four to one visionaries to one integrator. So four visionaries to one integrator and you're not a good match for all of those. So get out there and get the one that's a good match for you before somebody else does.

It's a mathematical likelihood, just based on what you said, that you actually might not find them on the first go because of the abundance of visionaries and the scarcity of integrators. So the sooner you get rolling on this, the better, because you might have to take a couple cracks at it. And your resounding message here is, that's okay, that's part of the process. Hang in there. Have faith that you will find that person eventually. Do you have thoughts on industry? So I'll set up this question this way. We've been working with a lot, we've been doing a lot of content around project management systems within the construction space because there's so little good stuff for our market. So we've been really trying to get talk to some smart people and build out some SOPs and frameworks for people to follow. And we've done that. We've had a few conversations. I've had a lot of conversations with GCs in particular about this project management role. One thing they have said to me is one mistake that we made early on is being too myopic about this person needs to have X amount of years in this specific industry. There's been a few people who've rolled the dice on someone who comes from a dental office and is joining a construction company, comes from events planning and is joining a construction company, a marketing firm. And they rock like they absolutely kill as a pm. Does the same idea apply for integrators? How much does industry knowledge and experience matter when you're searching for an integrator or does it not?

So in my experience, it's a nice to have, it's not a must have. And literally just before we hopped on, I was recording an episode of our podcast, the Rocket Fuel Podcast. And it was a commercial design build firm or specialized, but that's basically the space they're in. And that was the story was they brought in someone from retail, so, you know, kind of sales and marketing background in retail and you know, came in the company, worked in the company for a little bit on the sales and marketing side, but demonstrated the leadership capabilities and kind of the rest of the picture for what they needed and has been a smashing success as their integrator. So it happens and, you know, it makes sense. Right. So if you're a. If you're a sales professional, you can sell widgets. It doesn't really matter what they are. Right. If you're a finance professional, you know, it doesn't really matter what industry. I mean, there's different nuances and all that kind of stuff, but at the core, it's kind of, it's same. And for the leadership that we need that integrator to bring, it's about people. It's about leading and managing and holding people accountable, and it's about driving execution through the other leaders on that leadership team. It's about being able to communicate with that visionary, stay on the same page, understand what they're saying in a way that you can translate it to the rest of the organization. So that's what's the secret sauce in there.

And they'll pick up some of that industry nuance along the way. Trust that they will. They're an intelligent person. A year from now, they're going to know 99% as much as someone who's been in the industry for 20 years, and they'll fill the rest of that gap along the way. Those numbers aren't exact, but I'd make the case that they're going to pick it up pretty quickly.

Agreed. And they're in constant communication, constantly realigning with that visionary. And typically the visionary has tons of industry experience. So that's the great source. Right.

I want to talk a little bit about onboarding because I think that this mentioning some of these false starts as a part of the process. I have a really good rapport with one of our members and I reached out to them, I let them know you were coming on, and I was like, hey, what would you want to ask Mark? And so I'm going to read you this question that he wrote me an email and I'm changing some of the names to just keep privacy. Let's say his name is Jeff. It's not, but let's say this member's name is Jeff. So he goes. I have attempted to hire three different integrators over the last five years. I feel like these experiences have taught me a ton about how to properly implement an integrator. Specifically with Tim, I went through the process of all the assessments to see if we were a good fit. We were a perfect fit. The thing I missed on was the vision, casting and onboarding process. I figured Tim was the perfect Fit and he would be able to figure it out just like I did. Through this process, I have learned and have seen with Clark, the current integrator, that they want a very clear plan with the exact steps on what is expected. As a visionary, I suck at this. I just figure it out and when I screw up, I learn again by trying. I am now in the process of carrying out a very detailed 30, 60 and 90 day plan with Clark. And I think it's the right way to go about it. And I'm staying way more involved and giving him the responsibility once he is confident and we have a way for him to measure it. This goes against every fiber in my body. Spoken like a true visionary, but I feel like it is working. I have also spent a ton of time sharing vision and repeating it all the time. So the question is, as a visionary, how do you make sure the integrator has an onboarding plan that matches your vision?

Yeah. So I think it's fine to let them build it, but you've got to give them the inputs. So that means, you know, we talked about the wish list, the visionary wish list, all these things that I wish were true. You know, the visionary needs to do that work, provide that to them. You need to spend the time talking them through what the vision is and kind of the core questions that we talk about or in the EOS worldwide language, the vto, the vision Traction organizer. Work that out together if it's not already worked out, if it is already worked out, make sure that they understand that. Orienting them to kind of the landscape that we're in and what the current priorities are and that'll help with that. And then really challenge them to come back with what that 30, 60, 90 day plan is and then iterate to make sure that it makes sense that you're aligned. And we start off as soon as we can with some crystal clear expectations that we both see the same way. That's the goal. Right. And then from there, if I'm going to give you a triad of power on that onboarding, it's that coupled with just rock solid public support from the visionary. They got to be out front of the organization going, hey, this person's here. They're the right person. We're excited. We got a plan and not doing the little things that kind of pick at them and make it easy for the followers. Not the followers, but really the rest of the organization that are going to be reporting up into that integrator to get wobbly.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You're saying a public and highly visible endorsement of this person so that everyone knows you are in their corner, you have their back. And that's actually a harder thing to do than I think it seems for a lot of visionaries.

Well, it's hard and it's not a one time thing because it's, you know, make that statement to the organization early and often is probably a good way to think about it. So that's got to be there and it's also in again just reinforcing the behavior because here's what's going to happen. People are going to do end runs around that integrator. They're going to come to the visionary and the visionary is going to out of an old habit, they're going to respond, they're going to give them the answer, they're going to give them a decision, they're going to give them direction. Going to do all these things that we don't want them to do that are going to cut your integrator off at the knees. And so you got to work really hard on that.

Sorry, go ahead, go ahead Mark.

Well, the third thing, just to kind of finish the thought, this is kind of the three legs of the stool here are early wins because you've got to look for and visionaries give that incoming integrator set them up for early success. So what could we do in that first 30 days that's going to make you look like a hero that you can get done and I'll help you right. So that they get that because that's more currency with the rest of the organization for them to begin to believe, for them, to give them their confidence. For them to give them their trust. So crystal clear expectations, public support, that's early and often. And then early, early wins that we begin to knock off.

What's an example of an early win?

It can be anything. I mean here's something that we've been stuck on for a while that just hasn't been able to get done that with a little bit of focus and leadership is very doable. So let's knock that out. And it's something that's going to make a difference. People have been complaining about it for two years.

Right, okay, cool. But it, but it's not, it's not so vast or high level or difficult or thorny of an issue that this brand new integrator is like bro, I just got here.

Right, right, right. No, and it's. So there's another discussion there. So. No, I'm saying something that you are Not a total gimme, but something you're highly confident, you know, we can talk about how to do this and we just got to do it. And then this will, this will happen. So that's what we're looking for there. In the early wins, they need the dopamine rush.

They need that early, like I did something cool. And then more importantly, the optics, the team saw that happen. And then there's a little bit of trust building. So that's how you unpack that.

And you give them another one. Give them another one. The other thing, just real quick, Benji on this, is how quickly we do that ramp up is different for different organizations. So some organizations, literally, they bring the integrator in with almost a watch mentality for three months, six months, maybe even a year, which seems totally crazy to a lot of visionaries. They're paying them, but they're paying them just to be there and watch and learn and kind of take it all in. All the human dynamics that are going on, all the different kinds of things, maybe if they're learning a lot of new stuff, they don't think, throw them right into the fire. So understand there's kind of two ends of that option as well.

Yeah.

As to how fast we push them.

In, how steep the ramp up is. Yeah, that's another great point. I think we've stumbled into this next section I wanted to ask you about pretty organically. When we were talking, I think you were mentioning like end runs, long term success. This relationship is meant to last longer than simply the onboarding period. And I'm sure that we could do an entire podcast or a few on what breeds long term success within this relationship. But there's two things from the book that I thought was really podcast friendly content and easy to kind of work through and give people some real concrete value quickly. One is the five rules and the other is ids. I'm not sure which one of those you want to bang off first.

Well, I mean, the five rules we talked about, structure, remember when I talked about they're wired differently naturally. Friction. We're trying to put structure around that, to blend that friction into a positive, powerful force. So the five rules, we've kind of talked about them, but just to kind of tick them off and then you dive in wherever you want. You know, the first one is to stay on the same page. So it's being super intentional about doing the work. And we've got a same page meeting discipline that we teach to really become two halves of that same brain. So we do different Things. But you understand where I'm coming from. I understand where you're coming from. And we really. A same page integrator put in a situation is going to make a decision, give direction, much like if the visionary was right there in their ear, because they already know what the visionary would think and they're going to consider that in the context of whatever decision it is that they're forced to make. So that's the first rule. Second one is no end runs. So that's this thing about going around the integrator, you know, whether it's someone coming around the integrator to go to the visionary directly or whether it's the visionary doing what I call tampering, where they swing around the integrator and they go down into the organization and they give direction and make decisions there. Both are very detrimental to your integrator's ability to be successful because they.

The first end run you mentioned is literally just. I didn't like the answer I got from mom. I'm going to go to dad sometimes.

Sometimes it's just a habit. I've been going to dad forever. You know, mom was never here because.

They'Re used to just the visionary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The integrator might be the new kid on the block.

So don't assume bad intent.

Okay.

You know, there are old habits that will take a little time, but when it does happen, you got to call it out. And, you know, we want that visionary to do teach them what we call the question. And the question is when someone comes to them is, you know, are you going to tell Benji or am I going to tell Benji? Because somebody's got to tell Benji. And so now all of a sudden I'm sitting there in your office, I'm like, oh, crap, I forgot I was supposed to go talk to him. And so now it's awkward for me. So I'm probably not going to do that anymore. Right. And so when we see the visionary commit to using that question, then typically 30 days, you dry that side up and then same thing for the visionary when it happens. Integrator, visionary. You really want me to be successful, right? You got to stop doing that. I want you to talk to them. Talk to them all you want, but please, you cannot give direction or make decisions because that unwinds everything. You brought me here. That's my job.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. What's the third rule?

Third rule is the integrator is the tiebreaker. So we talked about that. So when the leadership team is at odds, they can't sort it out, the integrator swings in. Here's both sides of the argument in the context of the greater vision and makes the call so we can get unstuck and be moving forward again. Fourth one is that you know you're an employee when working in the business. So an owner, this is the owner employee, rules of the game, we call it. So owners think that they have a right to be an employee in the company and they do not. What do you mean by that? Well, there's two rights that are inherent to being an owner in a business. One is I get my right to my share of the profits based on whatever percentage I own and however that works. Two is I have my right to a say in the major, major decisions of the business. So we're going to take on a new investor, we're going to take on big debt, we're going to buy a building, we're going to sell a company, we're going to buy things like that. Not the day to day stuff. Other than that, that's it. And so there's a, this, because of this assumption that I have as an owner, a right to be an employee in the business. We get owners that show up in the business, they sit somewhere in the accountability chart and then somebody tries to hold them accountable or give them direction or make a decision they don't like and they reach in their back pocket and they pull out this owner card and they throw it down and they go, yeah, that doesn't apply to me. I'm an owner.

Interesting.

And then everybody kind of sits back and goes, well, this is all done. Just smoke and mirror saying this isn't even real. Why are we even doing this?

So you're not saying that an owner can't be an employee. An owner does have a right to be an employee within the business, just to be clear. But if they are, they have to play by the rules of the employees.

Yeah, they're not entitled to be an employee in the business. They have an opportunity just like anybody else we might hire to be considered for a role in the business. But we should be putting the best person for the job in that seat. And if they're going to be in that seat, they frankly should be held to a higher standard than what we hold everybody else to. They got to play to our core values. They got to, you know what we call gwc, that seat. They got to really be wired for it and want it and be able to do it at the level it needs to be done and be held accountable for that just like anybody else.

I would see this happening a lot during this growth zone. When you're sort of in this small to mid size range and your business is big enough that you have a visionary integrator dynamic and you are focusing on those big picture decisions, but it's not at the size where you don't actually place some core functions in the business. I could see you getting yourself into huge trouble with your team because using that owner card is just, just so seductive. You can't help it.

And again, a lot of times it's a. They've been taught that they saw somebody else doing that. It's just always been that way. So they don't even really think about the consequences of it. But when it comes down to it, it's a choice of what's more important to you as an owner. Is your individual ego the most important thing or is the success of this business? And it's a tough one. And people wrestle mightily with that decision because they think they want what's best for the business, but boy, they just can't give up. I don't want somebody to tell me what to do.

So that's the fourth, what's the fifth rule?

The fifth one is to, is to maintain mutual respect. So you know, this is about being eye level between that visionary integrated relationship. So I can't consider as visionary. I can't consider my integrator as something less than me. The integrator is not my minion. They're not there to do whatever I ask them. They're really more like my partner. And so I need to see them that way. And that integrator needs to see themselves that way. And they've got to be strong enough to lean back on me because a strong visionary will just mow down a weak integrator and they'll just run over them and they'll just do whatever they want. The integrators got to be confident and push back. So we get this nice kind of, kind of balance that's really, it's based on mutual respect. And we must never above all else say anything bad about each other in front of anybody else in the company. Right. Parenting the same way. Exactly, exactly. So you can't be out there going, oh, you know what I mean? It's just, that's just again, it unwinds the integrity of everything we're trying to do.

That mutual respect thing sounds really delicate and challenging to manage from a few in a few ways. Number one, visionaries tend to have a lot of swagger and sometimes I'm not one of these people that thinks that ego is terrible and the root of all evil. There's a healthy amount of ego that you need and swagger that you need to do anything remarkable. So visionaries have probably inherently more of that than most integrators. The second thing is the equity piece. Not every time, in not every example is the equity integrator gonna own a 50, 50% share. So this partnership thing is a conceptual, it's not actually, that's not actually the case on the cap table. So how do you have any thoughts on how to like just do that? Well, because I know there'd be a lot of visionaries who listen to this go, yeah, this all sounds great, I love it. Sounds good. But then they get there and a year later they do the mowing down thing that you mentioned.

So the, yeah, I would say it's the very rare thing when that integrator is your certainly 50, 50 part. I mean it, you know, it happens. But you know, the, the comp for the integrator seat is all over the place. Sometimes there's equity, sometimes there's not. It's all different levels. Again, it has to do with the situation that you're in, but it's the, it's the separation of ownership. So, so whoever the owners are, they need to be doing their thing in what we call that owner's box, where they're meeting monthly, they're talking about whatever they need to talk about, they're reviewing the financials, maybe the integrator is coming and making a presentation to them on the status of how things are going so they can ask questions, they can talk about. So we have all that they're in a sense are setting the high level direction of what we want this company to do. Do we want it to grow fast? Do we want to be profitable now? Do we want to milk the cash out of it? What is it we're trying to do from an owner's view? And then that information comes down through the visionary into the integrator and to the rest of the organization to, to paint the picture, paint the direction, and then they go and execute. So we should be aligned, the vision should be aligned with that. The visionary and the integrator. That's where that work they got to do to be aligned on that becomes super important. Right? And that's those same page meetings. If we are truly doing the work to be on the same page, then now we go out into the leadership team, we go out into the rest of the organization and we should be heading that stuff off proactively. The situation where, you know, you gotta put your fist down and you want to stop them because they're going in a rogue direction on you, that's contrary to what I want as an owner. That shouldn't happen. Frankly, I almost never see that happen.

Right. The other one I think is particularly challenging is avoiding the tampering, which is sort of a sub point under no end runs. I see this so often where we get a leadership team in place, we build up an accountabilities chart, but on certain little things, the visionary can't help but swoop down, meddle with a bunch of stuff that they feel very strongly about, and then basically exit and leave and go back to their spot. And the team is left feeling really, really frustrated and really demotivated because they thought they were doing some pretty good work there. And all of a sudden someone has come in with no context, by the way, and just said, I like it this way, do it that way, see you later, I gotta go do my visionary level stuff. So just another really common one. I've seen a lot that I think is challenging. What about ids? What is IDS and what role does it play in long term success?

So IDS is again an EOS language. That's our issue solving protocol. It stands for identify, discuss and solve. So issues are things that we need to figure out. There are things that are either problems we need to solve or opportunities we need to figure out how to take advantage of, you know, situations we need to talk about, information we need to exchange. It could be any of those buckets, but, you know, you gather all those things up and when you're together as a team, you prioritize from that list. You go, okay, if we could solve one thing on this list right now, if we could knock it out, you know, fix it, solve it forever, which is the one that would help us the most. And so you prioritize it and you pick three to start with and then you start into that first one and you what's really the issue here? Who are you asking? What do you need from them? And kind of try to capsule the issue. Then you talk it out, the context as much as you need to, to discuss it, to understand it. Let's say there's a decision that needs to be made. We figure out who the decision maker is. They may want input from others on the team, and ultimately once they feel like they've got the information to solve it, they make that decision. So we identify it we discuss that, we solve it. So the solve could be a decision, it could be a to do an action item that comes out of there that somebody needs to take away lots of different things, but that's really the issue solving track for how you deal with all the things that get on your radar as issues that we need to, we need to solve, we need to figure out, we need to deal with at some point. That makes sense.

It makes total sense. Identify, discussion, solve. Just to be clear.

Yeah. And the trap here, just to be clear is that discuss piece. Because what most teams will do, not really understanding what they're trying to achieve is they'll, okay, here's an issue and they'll just discuss, discuss, discuss, discuss, discuss. They'll just kind of keep going around and around. They're saying the same things over and over. And so if you, again, if you're clear on who the decider is, let's say it's a call that needs to be made. Once you kind of start hearing the same thing said over and over, then we've probably discussed it enough and we're trying to solve this thing. So what's the solve?

I see that in all transparency, we do that in our organization, I'm sure lots of people do, where we talk and we talk and we talk and there's lots of great stuff. I mean, the ideas that are generated are great, but they slip off into the ether because there's some link near the bottom of the chain. Either the true shot caller, the decision maker isn't present or isn't paying attention, or we don't have a clear next action step in the critical path. There's all sorts of reasons, but it seems so simple when you say it. But it is shockingly common how often stuff just sort of gets talked about for quarters or years and nothing ever happens as a result.

Here's the other trap is just because it just came up right now doesn't mean that this is when the best time is for us to talk about it.

Right.

So that's the idea of having a list and issues list to kind of, okay, you know, this thing came up. Yeah, boom, let's add that to the issues list because otherwise Mark and Benji may talk about it for 20 minutes. And then we get to the end of the 20 minutes and we realize, you know what, we needed Sam here to have this conversation fully. So we're going to have to Repeat that whole 20 minutes again with Sam and we'll never get our 20 minutes back again. Right. And so, so let's put it in a holding place unless it's something critical, urgent that we have to do right this minute. And then we deal with it in our level 10 meeting or whenever we're together working on issues. And we do it from a priority standpoint. So we don't work on that and use all of our time. And then we didn't work on that other thing. That was actually the bigger, more impactful thing.

Just a practical question. Do you actually, I mean, where does your issues live? Is this on a big ASANA board or is it in a piece of software? Is it a piece of paper? There's got to be a centralized place where stuff people can brain. It's not just one person. The team can brain dump issues and then you can easily sort through in terms of priority, what do you do in your businesses to capture all that in a way that you can go back to easily and prioritize easily.

Yep. So we have a platform called EOS1. And so it's exactly that. So. So it's basically set up to support an organization that's running on EOS and the meeting structures that we have and the level 10 meetings and all of that at all levels through the organization. So that's where we do it. But you can use other systems, Asana. I mean, there's different things that people use for project management or whatever to support this piece of what's on our radar and how do we move that into action.

But it's definitely not in the mind of the visionary. That's not a good spot for it. I know, I know where everything is. It's all up here. That's probably a red flag.

That should be a nice empty field of grass with blue skies and butterflies.

Totally. Okay, couple other questions to knock off here. I got one on behalf of our integrator listeners, and this goes back to something I said earlier. You just mentioned. There are way more visionaries than there are integrators out there in society. I would also make the case, and this is the cynic in me coming out, but here it is. I think there's a lot of people that think they're visionaries who just have a lot of ideas, maybe crippling ADD and a colorful imagination. And I think that there's a difference. I think that there's a difference between those two things. How does an integrator who's maybe working for someone and they're feeling like this business is cool, but whatever. I want to play a bigger game. I want to execute a really Fun and exciting vision that I'm excited about. We're putting ourselves squarely in the seat of an integrator right now. Do you have any thoughts around how they can tell the difference between a true visionary and just an ideas guy?

So here's where my mind goes on that question, Benji. It's a true visionary has a very clear picture of where they're trying to go and the end state of what it is that they're trying to accomplish and where they want to be. Okay, so an idea guide for, you know, use your terminology. I mean, you know, they may just maybe throwing things out in all different direction, but a visionary really has a, has a sense of the overall direction I'm trying to get to there. I want this to be true. I want to, you know, make this dent in the universe. Right. That's they're tied to something like that and all the different pathways that could lead us from here to there. Yeah, there's lots of different versions of that and that's what they're going to have different ideas about. But they're anchored in that big thing on the far horizon. Does that make sense?

So the destination is something that is super clear and quite detailed. The pathways to the destination. There's room for conversation, there's room for different ideas. That's kind of where the creative part comes in. But one thing that is somewhat non negotiable, if I'm hearing you correctly, is the end state that they're trying to get to.

I think I'd say that it's consistent.

Right.

It doesn't move around every day, it doesn't move around every week. It probably doesn't move around very much at all. It's all because it may be 20 years out there. Right. I mean, it may be pretty far down the road. But they know I want to be, I want to build something that's this big, you know, you know, Eos worldwide. We want to have 100,000 companies running on EOS US. Right. That's not changing for a while. It took us a while to get to 10,000, but we keep going from there. So it's having that anchor on the horizon, the visionary that comes from them. Certainly in the beginning, later on, the leadership team has a lot to do with that and shaping that. But really it's certainly originally inspired by them.

If I was an integrator, then I would be asking this visionary, this theoretical visionary, and I shouldn't say ideas guy, it could be an ideas woman as well. I would be asking them about this Vision and I would be paying very careful attention to the level of detail and how high resolution the image in their mind is versus low resolution. And I'd also be paying close attention to consistency week to week, month to month about that vision. And those would be telltales. I think that would tell you a lot about the strength or lack thereof of said visionary.

Yeah. So again, systematically in EOS, you know, we're very intentional about crafting a 10 year target or a core target that sits out there on, you know, call it a ten year horizon. Right. It may not be the end all, be all of what the visionary is seeing, but it's a boom. It's a point out there pretty far now that may not have a lot of detail. Again, that may be the hundred thousand companies, that may be the, you know, 25,000 houses or you know, whatever. Right. Whatever your thing is. Then we bring that camera in closer to a three year picture. Now at three years, it's closer. So that's where I want to be able to see some more detail. That's where I want to be able to see some more context. You know, what's our revenue, what's our profit, how many people do we have? You know, what are other key measures that we may have? What does it look like? Like, you know, what, what, what are the things that you look around and see that if those were true, you'd be like, hell yeah, that's awesome. I get excited about that. And so that's another attribute of that visionary is to be able to help paint that picture. That's it's exciting and motivating. You know, it's something that people want to get on board with and help make happen. Help, help go do gets everybody aligned in that place and it challenges them to think differently about how we're doing stuff today. Because we look at how we're doing it today and we look at this place that the visionary has helped us paint, it's kind of like, man, we're never going to get there. We keep trying to do it like this. So we got to change some things. That's where the new ideas and all that stuff starts to come in and fill those gaps.

I like that. That's a really good answer. The long term picture, it's okay to be somewhat undefined, but it needs to be anchored on a few core things that the visionary thinks is really important. But the medium term picture actually is pretty detailed, that is higher resolution and they're able to talk about it pretty confidently. It's a Good way to organize one's thoughts around it.

And then the one year plan is very concrete, crystalline. It's frankly, it's a prediction and we better hit it. Right. And so the beauty of this is we get to use both sides of that brain, right? We get to use the executional side, you know, kind of from 12 months on down to be. This is the stuff, we know how to do it. We just got to go make it happen. It's all about execution and being good predictors. But then beyond that kind of three years and beyond, it's about motivation, it's about, you know, attraction and alignment, right? And triggering that creative side of the brain by stretching to someplace we don't know how to get to. I don't know how, but I think it's possible. It's not inconceivable to me, but we just got to figure it out. And so you start to use both sides of that brain together across the team, and that's how big things happen.

So this is the last question I wanted to pick your brain on. One thing that we haven't talked about, but is an unfortunate, you could say it's even a sad reality of business, broadly, broadly speaking, visionaries and integrators can outgrow each other. And I'm wondering if you can explain how and why that happens and what we ought to do about it when it does.

Yeah, great. So let's go back to the three piece puzzle. Right? So visionary integrator business. And so none of those three pieces are static, right? Everything's changing all the time. And so visionaries are growing, integrators are growing, their worlds are changing individually, their personal worlds are changing. How much they're continuing to grow and develop as a leader in terms of whatever capabilities that they may have, their ambitions may be changing. All that's happening, same time they're riding on top of this train, that's the business that's going somewhere. And so you look at that train and that visionary integrator spectrum today versus what it looks like five years from now, and it can change, it can change quite a bit. And so we're always kind of checking for that fit again, thinking about it as puzzle pieces do, the pieces still fit. And sometimes we outgrow the company, sometimes the company outgrows us, sometimes one of us outgrows the other as far as the visionary or the integrator. And so when that happens, we just need to recognize it. Sometimes we see it coming, we feel it coming, and we can kind of start to have that. Have that discussion. Maybe it's the visionary that wants to leave. You know, they're ready to move on. They want to do something completely different. They want to, you know, just ride off into the sunset, you know, whatever it may be. Sometimes the integrator wants more opportunity than they're getting.

Right.

You know, the vision's not big enough for it. Vision's not big enough for them. Right. Or the company's not supporting their ability to execute. Right. I mean, there's lots of different reasons. Right. But it happens. And so when it happens, it's the same process that we talked about before. Let's back into what's the shape of that missing piece, and let's go find it. And so when we wrote the book, we were really thinking about it primarily from the perspective of the visionary, always trying to find that missing integrator piece. But since then, in. We've seen numerous times, companies that are actually the visionary ends up being the missing piece. And it's again, because that visionary moved on. Maybe it was a. Maybe it was a family business that's been handed down a couple times, and the next generation, or the next generation wasn't that visionary that their father or grandfather or grandmother might have been. And so it works the same way.

Can you bring that piece in? Can you bring that piece in?

Because.

Because here's the thing. You kind of make an assumption that the visionary personality is the one who gets things started. And so that's not really a need. But I've been thinking this the whole time. I'm like, if you have a business where they've got lots of integrator but not enough visionary, how does that work? Bringing someone in and saying, hey, steer the ship for us. Can that be successful?

It can be successful. In fact, EOS Worldwide is now an its third visionary. So, you know, Gino, he had his plan for when he wanted to move on, and we brought in Mike Payton, and Mike Payton served in that visionary seat for a period of time. And then now we've got Mark o' Donnell in that visionary seat. And each time it was either an intentional. Well, every time it was an intentional transition plan that said, hey, you know, I kind of want to go do something different. We need to. To find somebody to do this. Okay, what does it look like based on where we're trying to go? What does the shape of that puzzle piece look like? Let's go find one, and let's be really thorough about how we do that search and then bring them in and have a plan for how we're going to transition them in. You know, the big difference about bringing in a visionary is it, I would say it almost always involves equity.

Right.

Which is a really surprise because I mean, you know, they're the starters of things. So they have equity when they start it themselves. If they don't start it themselves, they're still kind of wired like that. So that's something that they is just kind of part of what they're after. And so, yeah, I mean, probably no surprise to anybody that that's a common part of the compensation equation when you bring in a visionary from the outside.

So you guys practice what you preach. I love it.

Well, I should say it this way, Benji. We learn just like everybody else does. So we're not perfect. And we're an entrepreneurial company too. And so we're growing and figuring things out and trying to learn as we do it.

Vision without execution is hallucination, I think is a nice way to sum up this conversation. It's a great line from the book and it's so, so true. I think this is. Mark, I just want to thank you for the wisdom you've shared. I know we went long here, but it just was so full of gold that I couldn't cut it off. Where can people find out more? If people want to connect with you or the eos world, where would you direct people to do that?

Yeah, so Mark C. Winters is pretty much me anywhere. So markcwinners.com, markcwinners is my handle on pretty much all the socials. So LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, whatever. So just remember that. So I start there. For visionaries and integrators, Rocketfueluniversity.com is the place to go and we have a community there of visionaries and integrators and we have calls every month. So you can go and sign up for that. I've got some video based training on there that's, that's, you know, it's, it's free. So you can get on there and you can, you can kind of dive deep into a lot of the stuff out of the book if you, if you like to listen to it and consume it that way. I probably tell some different stories there and then eosworldwide.com those are the best ways to find us and hopefully help you move down whatever path it is you're trying to go down.

I really appreciate you doing this with me. It's been a ton of fun to chat with you and thank you so much for your time today, Mark.

My pleasure, Benji. Nice to talk to you.

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