Alex Lepe
Business owners looking to get a grip on their business increasingly are turning toward author Gino Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System, a system he promulgates in a series of books headlined by “Traction.”
Wickman’s six-tiered system:
Vision. Everyone in the organization has to understand the company’s vision and be on board with it.
People. Business owners should not only surround themselves with great people, they should ensure they have the right people in the right places.
Data. Business owners should develop a handful of metrics they can rely on to measure what’s important, and, as part of this, everybody in the organization should develop his or her own scorecard with measurable goals. Do this right, and the business owner should be able to monitor the business, no matter where he or she is. The data should allow the business owner to reliably predict outcomes.
Issues. The best organizations become expert at identifying problems and solving them.
Process. The business should identify and document the core processes it takes to get things done and use them to set up consistently operated systems.
Traction. The best businesses become great at discipline, accountability, and execution.
Jeff Whittle, an entrepreneur and founder of Whittle & Partners, a Dallas-based consulting firm that coaches entrepreneurs, business owners, and leadership teams, calls EOS “the recipe for success.” Whittle, who’s implementing EOS at Fort Worth, Texas and FW Inc. magazines, sat down for a Q&A with FW Inc.
What EOS addresses that most businesses aren’t doing You’d always like to think you’re doing the right stuff, but the fact is you don’t know. The six components, when they’re put together, are just the right way to run your business.
What kinds of resistance do you encounter in implementing EOS? There are all kinds of resistance. Part of the process is asking hard questions about people and roles and capabilities. There are businesses that have sacred cows. There are business owners who are comfortable they’ve done things the way they need to be done, but everybody else in the organization disagrees. But the people who just love it say we have been spinning our wheels for so long.
Alex Lepe
Consultant Jeff Whittle, a FWIW certified EOS implementer, is installing the Entrepreneurial Operating System at Fort Worth, Texas magazine.
Are Traction’s recommendations based on research into effectiveness? It’s a result of thousands of hours of working with businesses.
Are certain businesses more appropriate than others for EOS? The professional services firms struggle with the organizational systems we put into place. But it’s a pretty universal toolkit.
Can you go wrong in implementing EOS? Thinking you’ve done the work through the sessions (means) the right things will happen. EOS is not a magic wand. People can lose focus. When they get back into the firefight of the day, it’s easy for all of this stuff to create the rationalization for why you’re not focusing on the important things. Strategic planning is the easy part. The hard part is making sure every single day, people are working on the things that are most likely to achieve outcomes.