There’s a drawing I make on a whiteboard with almost every team I meet, and it starts with a single box.
One box, one line across the middle. It’s the simplest thing I draw all day, and it changes more faces than anything else in the room.
The Founder Grading Himself on the Wrong Job
A while back I sat with a founder carrying that beaten-down look I’ve learned to recognize. Smart guy. Knew EOS. Told me he’d read ROCKET FUEL years ago. And he opened with a version of what I hear all the time: “I work more hours than anyone in the building, and I still feel like I’m failing at my job.”
So I walked to the whiteboard and drew his seat. One box: CEO. Then one line, straight across the middle.
On the top I wrote everything pulling the company forward: seeing the future, the ideas, the big relationships, the possibilities only he could see. On the bottom, everything holding the place together: the people, the accountability, the execution, the follow-through, the dozen daily decisions that keep the trains running on time.
His face changed.
He wasn’t failing at his job. He was doing two jobs. And grading himself on one.
Here’s what gets missed, even by people who speak the language: knowing the Visionary and Integrator exist is not the same as seeing them in your own world.
What Michael Gerber Taught Me
Michael Gerber got to this from a different angle. THE E-MYTH REVISITED laid out how every business owner is really three people in one: the Entrepreneur, the Manager, and the Technician… and the tug-of-war between them explains why so many owners end up run by their business, instead of running it. His take was about altitude. The one Gino Wickman and I wrote about in ROCKET FUEL is about intrinsic wiring: the Visionary and the Integrator are two different jobs, built for two different types of DNA.
Just look at how obvious this is everywhere else on your org chart. Nobody staffs Sales and Finance with the same person and expects greatness at both. Different work, different wiring, different scoreboard. Yet founders repeatedly blend the two hardest jobs in the company into one seat and call it a CEO.
Why the Second Job Stays Invisible
Both jobs look like “being the CEO.” That’s how you miss it. A morning spent casting vision and an afternoon spent untangling a people issue both feel like leadership. So nothing ever forces you to notice that one job is getting your best hours, and the other is getting your leftovers.
An unstaffed function doesn’t tell you (at first). It just leaks. Execution fades because nobody is driving follow-through. Or growth stalls because nobody is looking past this quarter. You’ll either neglect one role because it drains you. Or you’ll let it consume you, and have no juice left to flex your superpowers. The leak always traces back the side of the line you’re not naturally wired for.
You can’t fix a job you can’t see.
Make Both Jobs Visible
This is why I teach the Five Core Functions. Every business runs on five: Sales/Marketing, Operations, Finance/Admin, Integrator, and Visionary. The first three get boxes (at least one) on every org chart, every time. The last two typically get blended into a single “CEO” box, and disappear.
So here’s the solve, and it works even if you stay in both seats: split them on paper. Draw your box. Draw the line. (Or better yet, go ahead and draw the two distinct boxes: Visionary + Integrator.) For each function, write down what the company actually needs from it over the next 12-24 months. Then grade those two functions separately.
Most founders discover they’re doing pretty well on one side of the line, while the other side sits pretty much unstaffed. Neglected. That’s a structure problem, not a character flaw. And a structure problem is fixable the moment you make it visible.
Your Two-Job Gut Check
- If you drew the line across your seat right now, which side got your best time/energy this quarter, and which side got the leftovers?
- What did the Integrator side of your seat need these last few months that nobody, including you, actually owned?
- Are you actually bad at your job, or just much better at one job while the second one runs un(der)staffed?
Subscribe to receive weekly content like this: newsletter.markcwinters.com