Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business

by Gino Wickman

Reaching the next level requires more than just a product or service, or a simple determination to succeed. You need skills, tools, and a system to optimize your people, processes, execution, management, and communication. You need strong guiding principles that will work for your company day in and day out.

Successful business owners not only have compelling visions for their organizations, but also know how to communicate those visions to the people around them. They get everyone in the organization seeing the same clear image of where the business is going and how it’s going to get there.

Focus everyone’s energy toward one thing and amazing results will follow.

In his book Focus, Al Ries illustrates the point in this way: The sun provides the earth with billions of kilowatts of energy, yet if you stand in it for an hour, the worst you will get is a little sunburn. On the other hand, a few watts of energy focused in one direction is all a laser beam needs to cut through diamonds.

Successful leaders surround themselves with great people. You can’t build a great company without

two essential ingredients of any great team: the right people in the right seats.

the three absolutes for any good hire. They must get it, want it, and have the capacity to do it.

Above all else, your leaders need to be able to simplify, delegate, predict, systemize, and structure.

“No further progress and growth is possible for an organization until a new state of simplicity is created.”

Systemizing involves clearly identifying what those core processes are and integrating them into a fully functioning machine.

Dr. David Viscott, author of Risking, wrote, “If you cannot risk, you cannot grow. If you cannot grow, you cannot become your best. If you cannot become your best, you cannot be happy. If you cannot be happy, what else matters?”