What the heck is EOS? – Gino Wickman and Tom Bouwer
My CEO gave me this book as we’ve been transitioning to using the EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System) at our company, Chameleon Technologies Inc. This book is a complete guide for employees in companies running on EOS.
You should read this book if you’re either an employee whose leadership team has decided to use this operating system; if you’re curious about how exactly the EOS operating system works, or if you’re looking for a new way to run meetings, hold your team and yourself accountable, or getting everyone together on the same page working towards the same goals to accomplish the same vision. It’s a short and easy read – very informative and educational!
Highlights
- It’s the way that the people in the organization meet, solve problems, plan, prioritize, follow processes, communicate, measure, structure, clarify roles, lead, and manage.
- When you understand what the priorities of the company are, it helps you play your part in achieving them.
- EOS eliminates unhealthy and time-wasting activities due to miscommunication.
- It’s also important that you know you can’t do it alone.
- EOS will help you to work more effectively, with less frustration and a clearer understanding of the connection between your efforts and the success of your company.
- The 6 key components include vision, people, data, issues, process, and traction.
- A company running on EOS wants you to push, pull, and prod to help get each component as close to 100% strong as possible.
- The Data component is designed to help you objectively see where you are going – both as an individual and as a company.
- Your company will systemize all of the predictable and redundant tasks so you can use your creativity to solve problems.
- Ask yourself: What are you doing that is unnecessary? Are you doing something because one time 5 years ago a customer complained and you’re still doing it today? What is the best and most efficient way to do your job?
- The Traction component is about discipline, execution, and accountability.
- Everyone knows exactly what their priorities are and has a clear path on how to achieve those goals.
- Questions to ask your manager: What is our weakest component, and how can I help strengthen it? What is our strongest component, and why do you think that? What is the first thing you want me to do to help implement EOS at our company?
- Who you are as a company is defined by your core values.
- Rocks are the 3 to 7 most important objectives the company must get done in the next 90 days in order to achieve your 1-year plan.
- Rocks help solve this problem by breaking down annual goals into bite-size chunks.
- Once your issues are listed, your company can start to prioritize and work them one at a time – resolving them forever. The first step is admitting them.
- The fact is, if everyone is accountable, then no one is.
- Each individual should have 1-3 Rocks every 90 days.
- With Rocks, it is a lot easier to ask people if they got something done. Now you have a way, a language, to hold them accountable – and they don’t take it personally.
- A minimum standard for a team’s Rock completion is 80%. Perfectionist thinking can lead to teams feeling defeated or being chastised by perfectionist leaders who are only satisfied by achieving perfection (100%). This can also lead to people setting easy Rocks so that they can get 100% of them completed.
- Sharing good news with your team is great because it helps humanize the process, allows team members to get to know each other better, and starts the meeting off with a positive vibe.
- Your objective is to solve the most important issues well, not to solve all the issues on your list. The goal is to solve them once and for all – so they never come back.
- The process you go through to resolve issues is called IDS’ing. IDS is the Issues Solving Track and stands for: Identify, Discuss, and Solve.
- Getting to the real issue was hard, because a lot of times, it was about people.
- When you have a number, everyone knows what the expectation is. All accountability begins with clear expectations, and nothing is clearer than a number.
- Numbers produce results. Simply put, what gets watched improves.
- Quarterly conversations with your manager are an opportunity for you both to clarify expectations, to communicate well, to keep the circles connected, and if necessary, to make course corrections.
- Everyone has aspects of the job that are “not working” – it just makes us normal human beings.
- Don’t wait for your manager to come to you. If you don’t have a quarterly conversation set on your calendar with your manager, go to them and ask them when would be a good time to start.
- Overall, thanks to organizing Core Values, Accountability Chart, and People Analyzer, everyone will be the Right Person in the Right Seat.
- Using Scorecards and Measurables allows everyone to know how they are doing against their targets.
- A 90-day World setting focuses you to complete your Rocks every 90 days.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. History has shown that culture wins in the long run, not strategy.
*I take no credit for any of these points.