When your Visionary and Integrator™ don’t see eye-to-eye?
What do you do when your Visionary and Integrator™ don’t see eye-to-eye? This simple guide will help you get back on the same page so you scale your Traction® business.
Creating, sustaining, and growing a successful business is no simple task. It takes a real mix of personalities, talents, and experiences to move the needle.
At the top of your org chart, you need leaders that have all the bases covered. In fact, experts like EOS® Worldwide founder, Gino Wickman, say people are the key to getting everything you want out of your business.
When he created the Entrepreneurial Operating System®, a set of tools and concepts that help savvy entrepreneurs elevate their businesses, he made sure to designate two roles your company can’t live without:
- The Visionary
- The Integrator
But even with the best people in these roles, if they’re not creating, following, and scaling the right processes, you’re on the road to nowhere. And that’s why the Process Component™ sits at the very heart of EOS. (It’s also why you can’t afford to skip it.)
But how do we define the Visionary and Integrator roles? What processes come under each leader’s jurisdiction? And when it comes to Visionary vs. Integrator, what processes do these differing personalities need to stay in sync and keep moving forwards?
What is a Visionary?
If you look up the definition of ‘Visionary’, you’ll find something along the lines of ‘a person with original ideas about what the future will or could be like.’
So when it comes to determining who the Visionary is within your company, the answer is usually pretty simple: the person who had the original idea for the business.
Typically, the founder.
The ideas person. This person looks at the future and has a clear image of where they want the company to go, all while inspiring others to own and buy into that vision.
Great visionaries are excellent people-people. They build relationships, solve problems, and close deals with ease. But when it comes to the more detailed operational nuts and bolts, they tend to lack focus, are easily distracted, and want everything to happen at once.
That’s where the integrator steps in. 
What is an Integrator?
While the Visionary focuses on what success looks like, the Integrator focuses on making it happen. They are all about the execution. And so, you usually find them sitting in a presidential or CEO/general manager role.
Integrators take the big picture and get to work planning a roadmap to get there, breaking each milestone down into trackable and achievable tasks with owners and deadlines.
Excellent Integrators rock at turning chaos into order and gluing everything together to stay that way.
How? Ensuring every employee understands their role, embodies the company values, and has the processes and systems to execute every task successfully. 
But, as ultimate realists, don’t be surprised if they aren’t always quite so excited by the big picture. They’ll take a tad more convincing (and logic) to get them onside.
Unsure if you’re a Visionary or an Integrator? Check out this Visionary/Integrator test to find out!
How to keep the Visionary and Integrator™ Duo in sync 🤝
Here’s a simple way to think about the Visionary vs. Integrator relationship: one is the heart, and one is the brain.
If either is missing, everything is lost.
The same goes for your business. Both roles are equally essential. But the two have to work in tandem.
Just like the messages between your brain and heart dictate how much exercise you’re capable of, the communication between your Visionary and Integrator will determine how successful your company will be.
Maintaining that relationship, knowing who does what, and trusting them to ace their part needs to be your main priority. But with two opposing personalities who tackle problems in totally different ways, keeping the peace isn’t always an easy task.
And that’s where you’re going to need some robust processes to keep the Visionary vs. Integrator battle at bay.
Visionary and Integrator™ Processes to keep you rowing in the same direction
A big part of EOS is making sure everyone has clarity on the business’s direction. Especially the Visionary and Integrator™.
To do that, you’re going to need to stick to a few of these process-driven EOS tools.
1. A process to get you aligned: Answering the 8 Questions™
At the start of any Visionary-Integrator relationship, you’ll need to carve out some time to ensure you’re aligned on the basics. To help you cover every angle, you’ll want to pin down some concrete answers to the following 8 Questions:
- What are your Core Values?
- What is your Core Focus?
- What is your 10-year target?
- What is your (high-level) marketing strategy?
- What is your 3-year picture?
- What is your 1-year plan?
- What are your Rocks (quarterly priorities)?
- What are the issues getting in the way of achieving all of this?
Don’t forget that all current and future employees need these answers, so consider incorporating them into your onboarding process or CPD courses.
2. A Visionary and Integrator™ process to keep you aligned: The Same Page Meeting™
So you’re aligned on the 8 Questions. 
But staying aligned isn’t always as simple as it sounds. And that’s where having a review process, like the Same Page Meeting, comes into play.
Every month (or more frequently if needed), you have a fixed two-hour slot to follow an IDS™ process — identifying, discussing, and solving every issue, concern, and idea both leaders have.
By keeping in sync at the top, you’re providing consistency for your whole organization and removing any opportunities for confusion and misdirection.
3. A Visionary and Integrator™ process to keep everyone aligned: The EOS Process®
A same page meeting as per the EOS process is the single most important thing you can do to strengthen your Visionary/Integrator relationship.
It’s essential that both members of the team start off on the same page before directing their various teams and projects.
If you want your people to stick to the strategy, you’ll need a process that’s documented, shared, and accessible to all.
Processes every Visionary needs to start with
Processes naturally fall under one leader’s remit. And usually, it’s pretty obvious whose. But it’s always worth checking that you’re in sync and not duplicating or overstepping.
If you’re a Visionary, you’ll likely end up with fewer processes on your plate. But that doesn’t mean the few you are responsible for are less critical.
Your processes are those the entire organization is built on. Therefore, they need to be strong with a capital ‘S’.
Here are some crucial Visionary processes to get you started:
A process for what’s key: Deciding, reviewing, and changing core values
Usually, you don’t want to be tweaking your core values all that frequently. But, on the other hand, play with them too much, and your employees may start to think they’re wishy-washy and irrelevant.
This means that you need a process to simplify them when you change them. Core values come under the Visionary’s remit, and they affect every employee, every service, and customer…so they have to be on the money.
Every employee needs to know and embody your core values. Don’t just write these up on the wall. Find a way to bring these to life through your processes.
A process to simplify decision-making: Defining your Core Focus™
Once you’ve narrowed down what exactly your company stands for and the values it promotes, you’re going to need to set to work on how you answer two key questions:
- Why do we exist?
- What are we better at than anyone else?
These answers should form a problem-solving process that can be used by every employee, e.g., when making a judgment call, which option aligns with why the organization exists? Which promotes your unique selling point?
Your Core Focus is the ‘why’ behind every role, every task, and every success within the organization — from the day you open your doors to the day you reach your goal. Choose a focus that will stand the test of time, not just last a few months.
Other Visionary processes include:
- A process for how to create, share and make your 10-Year Target™ and 3-Year Picture™ accessible.
- A process of formulating, discussing, debating, and ranking new ideas.
- A process of building, nurturing, and utilizing relationships to advance the organization.
Processes every Integrator should prioritize
If you’ve landed in the Integrator hot seat, chances are you’re already a process person.
Organized, efficient, and grounded as you are, you know how crucial processes are in running a tight ship, especially if you have someone at the helm who tends to change course mid-route (no names mentioned 
).
We won’t bore you with the basics because we know you have them down. But we’ll cover a few process essentials for you to check off as we go.
A process for: Well, everything
Ok, let’s get real. When it comes to processes, your workload is substantially heavier. But that’s because you’re substantially quicker at just getting things done.
Business Success Consulting Group Co-founder, Adi Klevit, says you have to prioritize a few core departments when implementing processes: Business Development, HR, Finance, Customer Service, Sales, Operations, and Marketing.
If you’re starting, implementing processes can be overwhelming. Check out Adi’s top tips for help. (Hint: Among other things, she recommends a rockstar process platform.
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A process for making meetings meaningful: Level 10 Meeting™
If you’re going to apply any process across the board, let it be the Level 10 Meeting — a process-driven approach to making your meetings way more productive.
How? By skipping status updates and background info and heading straight to the things that are going to move the needle on your mission, namely:
- Understanding the BIG issues in your business
- And solving them
If you’re ready to level up with Level 10 Meetings, take a look at our guide to keeping them super-productive.
A process for getting results: Goal-setting with Rocks
Use your Level 10 Meeting to initiate a Rocks process.
Setting Rocks is a process business leaders use to decide which tasks to prioritize in 90 days to reach the desired result.
Every employee, every team, and every department has them. But to keep it consistent and efficient, you’ll need a straightforward process on how to set, track and review them.
If increasing employee focus, generating results and improving role clarity is what you’re after, check out our guide to rocking your Rocks.
"Visionaries have groundbreaking ideas. Integrators make those ideas a reality."
Gino WickmanFounder, EOS Worldwide
People need processes (even Visionaries and Integrators)
It’s easy to get sucked into thinking processes are there to onboard newbies and check a box.
But that’s way off the mark. Intelligent, accessible processes have so much more to offer.
Aligning leaders.
Guiding the masses.
Ensuring competitive advantage.
And skyrocketing productivity.
As Visionaries and Integrators, it’s not only your job to create excellent processes, but to share them, scale them and embody them.
And by working as a team, with a pro process platform on hand to help, you’re well on your way to achieving process perfection.
Do your Visionary and Integrator™ see eye to eye?
Do you feel you’re optimized to scale?
Try Whale for free to get organized.
FAQs about Visionary and Integrator
What is the role of an Integrator?
An Integrator plays a crucial leadership role within a company, acting as the driving force behind turning vision into action. These operationally focused individuals are responsible for aligning the company’s strategy with its goals, ensuring that the vision is not just a concept but a reality. They create actionable plans and guide teams to execute them effectively, making sure everything runs smoothly and gets done.
