How 97 Display's visionary and integrator built a durable partnership

Executive overview

Most visionaries struggle to communicate their vision clearly — even when it feels crystal clear to them. Without a trusted integrator, implementation stalls and vision stays vision.

Houston Goodwin and Kristie Kenley of 97 Display share how they built a functional visionary/integrator (V/I) partnership from scratch, the friction they hit early, and how they now operate across multiple companies.

The rarest asset isn't a great idea — it's finding someone who loves to do everything you hate.

How the partnership formed

• Houston started in sales, moved toward leadership, and initially sat in the integrator seat — a poor fit
• Kristie was already handling operational work Houston disliked; the transition was more evolution than appointment
• Both had tested out of their natural strengths before; EOS gave them language for what they'd been doing instinctively
• Reading Rocket Fuel felt like recognition, not revelation — "remembered, not learned"
• They framed the pairing as a long-term investment, not just a fix for 97 Display

Early challenges

• Kristie's hardest adjustment: holding final decision-making authority while still reporting to Houston
• Acting as one unified voice — rather than two individuals — took months to internalize
• Closest analogy: early marriage, where every decision requires syncing with another person
• Houston's "hurricanes" — walking into meetings and derailing them with new ideas — were disruptive before they had a name for it
• They hired a leadership coach for the first four to six months to act as a third-party mediator

Building alignment: same page meetings

• Full-day off-site once a month (now in their own office after taking over the co-working space they'd been using)
• Structure: two to three hours on ideas → lunch → afternoon for action items and agenda-setting
• They maintain a shared issues list in the 90.io platform before each session
• Houston uses same page time as a "safe space" to brain-dump ideas he may not even believe in by the end of the session
• Entire day is blocked even if they wrap at 2–3pm

Most revealing early signal

• On the EOS Organizational Checkup, Houston assumed vision clarity would score 10/10
• The team rated it a four
• That gap — between what the visionary assumes and what the team actually absorbs — drove their focus on translation and connecting the dots
• Kristie's role shifted: Houston paints the vision well; she maps out what each person at 3,000 feet needs to do to execute it

Handling tension and disagreement

• Both describe themselves as intense people — arguments are common, but treated as a normal part of alignment
• Most significant conflict: Houston was thinking V/I for life across multiple companies; Kristie was thinking V/I for 97 Display only
• Resolving that gap — Houston making clear how seriously he meant it — was a turning point
• "Disagree and commit" is the operating norm: disputes happen privately, the team always sees a united front
• Tiebreaker authority (integrator) is never exercised in front of the leadership team; pre-alignment happens before major issues surface publicly

Scaling to multiple companies

• After two years, they now operate as V/I across three software companies under a parent holding group
• Their pitch to the parent company for a new acquisition: "I'm a package deal — we do EOS or I don't take the role"
• Path forward: integrators for each brand, with V/I at the holding-company level
• A leadership team off-site moment crystallised buy-in — the team pushed Houston back toward long-term vision when he was getting stuck in short-term logistics
• The V/I structure is what made expansion possible; neither role is a stepping stone to the other

What makes the relationship work long-term

• Trust is foundational — without it, none of the other mechanics function
• Naming each other's tendencies defuses them: "Houston hurricane" signals a pattern without making it personal
• Actively appreciating what the other person contributes, especially in difficult moments
• Visionaries must adapt how they communicate — the burden is on the communicator, not the audience
• Neither role competes with the other; no one is gunning for the other's seat
• The analogy Houston uses: bands break up when the backup singer wants to be the lead singer