Mark C. Winters on keeping visionaries accountable: the integrator does it through regular same-page meetings where you set expectations together and agree how tightly to hold them. If they refuse, escalate to the board or owners.
Hey everybody, it's Mark C Winners. And today I'm going to address the three most common questions I get about visionaries. Who holds a visionary accountable, how do you do it? And what do you do with a visionary who refuses to be held accountable? Alright, let's just take them in order. Number one, who holds the visionary accountable? The integrator. If you sit in the integrator seat, that's your job. Think of the visionary as this wild mustang. You want to tame that horse and create the right track for them to run on. You have to be strong enough to stand up to the visionary when necessary and create those guardrails that will help them and the rest of the organization stay on track and win the race. Number two, how do you hold the visionary accountable? Use your same page meetings to set agreement on two key how tightly the visionary needs to be held accountable and how you as the integrator are going to say no to the visionary. Some visionaries want to be held highly accountable, others need a little more rope. You have to create mutual respect and have the equivalent of a safe word on reining the visionary in and saying no when needed. If you don't set those basic ground rules, you're going to feel more friction and less traction. Finally, what about a visionary who refuses to be held accountable? Hopefully that doesn't happen. But if it does, if the visionary doesn't follow the rules you've set in place together in your same page meetings, then it's time to involve the board or the owner's box. That's a very rare situation, but it can happen. So to recap, number one, who holds the visionary accountable? The integrator. Number two, how do you do it? By setting expectations together in your same page meetings. And number three, what do you do when a visionary violates that trust? You go to the board or the owner's box for that extra layer of accountability. So hopefully that gives you a better understanding of how visionary accountability works. If you want to learn even more, go to rocketfueluniversity.com and until next time, go Rocket.
