Mark C Winters (@MarkCWinters) header
Mark C Winters (@MarkCWinters) profile picture

Author, VISIONARY Co-Author, ROCKET FUEL (with Gino Wickman) #Visionary + #Integrator = Rocket Fuel. Get everything you want out of your business.

Flower Mound, TX
Joined May 2009
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In 1993 I stood at a microphone a few feet from W. Edwards Deming. The word I took home still shapes how I coach founders. Tampering. Communicating: walking around, asking questions, listening, looking at the numbers.
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2/ Tampering: giving direction or making a decision in an area someone else (not you) owns. Talk to anyone in your company. Then take what you learn to your #2, not to the team. Same insight. No undone work.
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Every founder wants freedom. Few want what buys it.
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The playbook is why the quarterback can call an audible.
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The founder with the most structure takes the longest vacations. Sounds backwards. But if every decision runs through you, time off just builds a backlog. Give every job an owner who isn’t you. Let the team solve problems without you. Then leave. Structure fuels freedom.
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"My COO is so negative. Every idea I bring, they tell me why it won't work." Good. You think in options. They're built to narrow them. That friction is the combination working.
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1/ I learned to drive stick in my dad’s 1967 Chevy pickup. That clutch is still teaching me how to run my calendar. The pedal had a foot of travel. You couldn’t lean back and give it half a push. You had to mash it to the floor. Anything less? Metal on metal. Grrrind.
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3/ The grind has a name: attention residue. Part of you stays in the last meeting. It’s worse when that task is unfinished or you switch in a hurry. The person across the table gets a Visionary in neutral.
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4/ The fix takes one minute. Before you switch, write down the answers to these two lines. 1. Where I stopped. 2. What’s next. That’s the clutch, mashed all the way to the floor. Rapid shifting was never the skill. Clean shifting is.
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If every decision needs you, you built a ceiling.
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A founder told me, "My gut said to hire them, and I was wrong twice." His gut built the company. It just had almost no reps on hiring a #2. On your second in command hire, move when your gut and the data agree.
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A mentor once asked me, "If your energy is the fuel for your company, how full is your tank?" I didn't like my answer. I'd been showing up earlier, staying later, missing family stuff. I called it commitment. Here's the check I run now. 3 gauges: Body, Mind, Spirit.
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Score each one from 1 to 10. Honestly. Fill the lowest one first. One gauge, one month. When one slips, the others follow. You'd never run your best machine until it broke. Why run yourself that way?
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You can only improvise on Saturday what you drilled all week.
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A founder apologized for not being able to multitask. He'd parked three big projects until one key seat was filled. He called it a weakness. I call it sequencing.
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1/ My dad was a small-town doctor in Poteau, Oklahoma.
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8/ You jump into decisions your team already owns. First drag, then confusion, then resentment.
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9/ Every one costs you twice. Your team pays in confusion. You pay in freedom. Which one did you do this week?
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