Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business

by Gino Wickman

When everything is important, nothing is important. The EOS approach is going to force you to focus on a few goals rather than too many. By doing that, you will actually accomplish more. That is the power of focus.

HOW TO CREATE YOUR ONE-YEAR PLAN Schedule two hours with your leadership team. When everyone is sitting at the table, decide on the future date. It’s highly recommended you keep within either a calendar year or your fiscal year, regardless of where you are in the year. So, if it’s July, set your future date as December 31. After that time, you’ll be able to set a brand-new full one-year plan. Having a partial-year plan allows you to gain experience with the process between now and then.

As with the three-year picture, again, decide on the numbers. What is your annual revenue goal? What is your profit goal? What is the measurable? This number should be con...

With the three-year picture in mind, discuss, debate, and decide on the three to seven most important priorities that must be completed this year in order for you to be on track for your three-year picture. These become your goals. They need to be...

Remember, measurable means you can measure it. “Sales” is not a specific goal, but “$1 million in new sales” is. “Improve customer satisfaction” is not a specific goal, but “increase average customer rating to a 9” is.

“Attainable” means that it’s doable. Setting unrealistic goals is the biggest trap entrepreneurs fall into. The team has to believe it’s possible to hit the goal, or else you can’t hold someone accountable to it. If every goal is a “stretch goal,” how do you know what success is? Goals are set to be achieved.

Make sure you have a projected budget in place that supports your one-year plan. Many companies set goals for the year with no financial projection to confirm that the plan is even feasible. A budget will force you to confirm that you have all of the resources you need to achieve the plan and that when you achieve the revenue goal, the profit number is realistic. Almost every ti...

Once your one-year plan is clear, you need to narrow your vision all the way down to what really matters: the next 90 days. You should determine what the most important priorities are in the coming quarter. Those priorities are called Rocks.

Quarterly Rocks create a 90-Day World for your organization, a powerful concept that enables you to gain tremendous traction. How do they work? Every 90 days, your leadership team comes together to establish its priorities for the next 90 days based on your one-year plan. You discuss and ultimately conclude what has to be executed in the next quarter to put you on track for the one-year plan, which in turn puts you on track for the three-year picture, and so on.

In a growing organization, it’s normal to battle for resources, time, and attention. There will be tension. But when you have finished setting your Rocks and all the dust has settled, you should all be united on what objectives take precedence in the coming quarter. The focus of the Rocks is what makes this process so productive. Most organizations enter the next quarter battling on all fronts. They make everything a priority and accomplish very...

The eighth and final section in the V/TO is the Issues List. While it may seem strange to include a list of problems as part of your vision, that list is actually as important as the previous seven questions. Now that you clearly know where you’re going, you have to identify all of the obstacles that could prevent you from reaching your targets.

The sooner you accept that you have issues, the better off you’re going to be. You will always have them; your success is in direct proportion to your ability to solve them. Your leadership team should state them openly and honestly so that you can get them out of your heads and into writing. In doing so, you’re taking the first step to solving them.

HOW TO IDENTIFY YOUR ISSUES This exercise can be done very quickly, in 15 minutes at most. Ask the team to think of the obstacles, concerns, and opportunities you face in achieving your vision. From there, let the opinions fly. Don’t sugarcoa...

Now that you have completed your V/TO—the first part of the Vision Component—the foundation for the rest of The EOS Process is set. The second part is to share your vision with your employees. The number one reason employees don’t share a company vision is that they don’t know what it is. The only way you can determine if your vision is shared by all is simply to tell

Now that your vision is on paper, you must communicate it to everyone in the organization, and every person must understand it and share it. When everyone’s energy is going in the same direction, their accumulated drive will kick in and create an exponential force.

Don’t be afraid to let your people challenge the vision and ask questions. These inquisitions, along with the preceding dialogue, will help you both become more invested in the vision. While you may worry that they may point out a flaw in the plan, that’s not a bad thing at all. If they notice and highlight a potential problem, they’ll be even more committed as a result of their involvement in the resulting exchange and resolution. Be willing to be vulnerable.

Here’s the brutal truth: Not everyone in your organization will share your vision. The responsibility that you have as the leadership team is to share your V/TO and inspire your people with a compelling vision. As long as they understand it, they want to be a part of it, and their actions perpetuate the vision, they share it. The ones that don’t will stand out by contrast. Most of the time, they’ll leave before you have to let them go. But as a good manager, you’ll be doing them and others in ...

You can effectively communicate the company vision in three events: 1. Have a company kickoff meeting and unveil your clearly defined vision (the V/TO). This is an opportunity to share your newly created core value speech for the first time. Make sure to include question-and-answer time. 2. Every 90 days, have a short (no more than 45-minute) state-of-the-company meeting with all employees. The objective of this eve...

The quarterly state-of-the-company has proven to be the most effective discipline for helping people share, understand, and buy into the company vision. In its purest form, the meeting has a three-part agenda. 1. Where you’ve been 2. Where you are 3. Where you are going Each quarter, you and your leadership team fill each of those agenda items with three of the most relevant data points, and you’ll deliver a clear, concise, and powerful message that keeps your people in the know. Its effectiveness stems from delivering i...

People need to hear the vision seven times before they really hear it for the first time. Human beings have short attention spans and are a little jaded when it comes to new messages. As a good leader, you must remain consistent in your message. The first time they hear it, they’ll roll their eyes and say, “Here we go again.” (Remember, you created this culture through past inconsistencies.) The second time, they’ll still roll their eyes a little. But by the fourth and fifth time of hearing it, they’ll realize this is for real. By the seventh time, they’ll be on board. You’ll have to adjust your outlook from “I’ve told them three times—this is so frustrating!” to “I’ve told them three times—only four more to go!” Be patient, and remember that this is a journey.

You achieve your full potential when your leadership team is on the same page with answers to the eight questions. Everyone in the organization shares the company vision, wants to be a part of it, and perpetuates it with his or her actions and words.

Now you must start to make the vision a practical reality.

It all comes down to getting the right people in the right seats. Jim Collins made this idea very popular in his bestseller Good to Great.

The right people are the ones who share your company’s core values. They fit and thrive in your culture. They are people you enjoy being around and who make your organization a better place to be.

In this chapter you will be introduced to your second EOS tool, the People Analyzer, which will cut through the murkiness of personnel choices to show you who’s right for your company. Core Values + People Analyzer = Right People

The right seat means that each of your employees is operating within his or her area of greatest skill and passion inside your organization and that the roles and responsibilities expected of each employee fit with his or her Unique Ability®.1 This is a concept created by Dan Sullivan and is a registered trademark of The Strategic Coach, Inc. In the book Unique Ability, authors Catherine Nomura, Julia Waller, and Shannon Waller explain that everyone has a Unique Ability®. The trick is to discover yours. When you’re operating from within your Unique Ability®, your superior skill is often noticed by others who value it. You experience never-ending improvement, feel energized rather than drained, and, most of all, you have a passion for what you’re doing that presses you to go further than others would in this area. When this combination of passion and talent finds the right audience, it naturally creates value for others, who, in return, offer you greater rewards and more opportunities for further improvement. It’s like your personal core focus. When a person is operating in his or her Unique Ability®, he or she is in the right seat.

One of the obstacles in gaining traction and achieving your vision is that roles, responsibilities, expectations, and job descriptions are unclear due to structural issues. A hazy structure may have gotten you to where you are, but it will not take you any further. A common mistake entails creating a structure to accommodate people you like or don’t want to lose. When creating a structure to function efficiently, you must take the long view. Sometimes this means eliminating or changing seats that are no longer relevant. To break through the ceiling, you must make sure you have the right structure in place to get you to the next level. That leads us to the Accountability Chart, the ultimate tool for structuring ...

As you move forward, you’ll be faced with two types of issues regarding your people. The first is having the right person in the wrong seat. The second is having the wrong person in the right seat. I...

In this case, you have the right person (i.e., one who shares your core values), but he or she is truly not operating in his or her Unique Ability®. This person has been promoted to a seat that is too big, has outgrown a seat that is too small, or has been put in a position that does not utilize his or her Unique Ability®. Generally, this person is where he or she is because he or she has been around a long time, you like him or her, and he or she is a great addition to the team. Until now, you probably believed you were helping this person by promoting him or her to his or her existing seat. In actuality, you were hindering his or her growth and the growth of the company. Your job in this situation is to move this person out of that seat and into a seat that is right for this person, one where he or she will be successful.

Assuming that there is such a seat—and most of the time, there is—the problem is solved once you move this person. Unfortunately, sometimes there is no seat available. In this case, you have to make a very difficult choice. You have to make decisions for the greater good of the business, and you don’t have the luxury of keeping people around simply because you like them. If this is the case, you must

let them go. This will be one of the toughest issues you will have to face. Once the change is made, the company is always better off, and usuall...

In this case, the person excels at what he or she does, is extremely productive, and is clearly in his or her Unique Ability®. What makes this person the wrong person is that he or she doesn’t share your core values. While this obstacle may seem like something you can live with in the short term, that person is killing your organization in the long run. He or she is chipping away at what you’re trying to build, in little ways that, most of the time, you don’t even see. It’s that wry comment in the hallway, the dirty look behind your back, and the dissension that this person spreads.