EOS Worldwide Blog

Is Your Leadership Team Doing Too Much, or Too Little?

Written by:  Mike Paton

Gino Wickman’s book is called “Traction” for a reason.  When an organization gains traction, it moves forward.  Things change, issues get resolved, and the business improves in some meaningful way.

If your company needs more traction, it’s stuck.  You’ve hit the ceiling, and you’re normal.  You may also be frustrated, because nothing is more frustrating for an entrepreneur than an inability to overcome challenges and make positive change.

So what’s getting in your way?  Why haven’t you been able to get “unstuck?”

It’s either because you’re trying to do too much, or because you’re doing too little.

When your company achieves the “Entrepreneurial Utopia” that Gino described in a recent post, you’ll be hitting on all cylinders.  You and your leadership team will achieve goals, complete Rocks and solve Issues using a “Ready, Aim, Fire” approach.  Like many things in business, getting there sounds easy but is really hard.

Some companies default to a “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach.  Led by one or more Visionaries with an endless number of ideas and boundless enthusiasm for change, they change course frequently, sign up for too many priorities and get very little done (and almost nothing done well).  They become “flavor of the month” organizations where everyone is exhausted by the steady stream of latest and greatest new things.

“Ready, Aim, Aim, Aim…” is just as frustrating.  For these leaders and organizations, nothing is ever good enough to be “done.”  They spend hours researching, strategizing, planning, re-analyzing… well, you get the point.  They never decide, they never launch, they never implement.  Nobody ever hits the “GO” button.

I’ll write more about each of these faulty, frustrating approaches in subsequent posts.  In the meantime, if you’re “stuck,” ask yourself whether you’re doing too much or doing too little.

Leadership Team Development #10 – Great Leaders Do This

Written by:  Don Tinney

Great leaders do 5 things.  FIRST, they give clear direction.  Giving clear direction simply means you are creating clear openings. 

There’s a saying that nature abhors a vacuum.  If there’s an empty space, something will rush in to fill it.  Great leaders come together on a leadership team to create a compelling vision that provides opportunities or openings for people to step up and into. 

The V/TO, Vision/Traction Organizer, is the best tool for clarifying a compelling vision.  With or without the tool, you simply need to unite your leadership team around the answers to 5 questions:

• who are you (as defined by a small set of non-negotiable core values)
• what are you focusing on (your passion and your niche)
• where are you going (what’s the big goal)
• how you are going to get there (what are you going to say to whom to advance your cause)
• what does your world look like 3 years down the road

When your vision is clear and compelling, the right people will rush in to become part of it.

Takeaway point for this week:

• Answer this question:  I am giving clear direction to every one of my direct reports – yes or no?  If your answer is to 6 out of 7, it’s no.  To be a great leader every one of the people reporting to you needs to embrace, “step into” the opening created by your answers to the 5 questions above.

Encouragement:  It’s never too late to start giving clear direction to your troops.  Some may choose to step out, and that’s okay.  The opportunity you are creating is only there for people who get it, want it, and have the capacity to do something with it.

What Would Your Company’s Museum Say?

Written by:  Ed Callahan

The title of this post popped into my head after reading John Bishop’s post in his Leadership is a Verb blog, entitled What Would Your Museum Say.

The gist of the post is that if you knew there would be a museum dedicated to your life one day, how would that affect what you did every day, what you said, what you accomplished, or didn’t?

I think the same question could be applied to your company.  As a business owner or leader it is too easy to get lost in the details working in our businesses every day.  It is far too simple to think we are just doing this to make a buck, or more nicely said, to make a living and support our families.

What would people see on display in your company’s museum?  Would they see a set of clear core values that show what human behaviors you deemed to be most important and by which you expected to be measured?  Would they clearly understand your purpose by what they see on display?  Would they see things you have done that reveal some area of mastery? 

You get the picture.  It’s a context that might help you clarify your vision for your company.

Leadership Team Development #9 – Leading vs. Managing

Written by: Don Tinney

Leading and managing are very different endeavors. 

Leadership is about:

• working “ON” the business – getting out of the day-to-day battle to work on your strategy
• providing clear direction to your people
• creating openings for your people
• thinking – envisioning and planning

Management is about:

• working “IN” the business – getting the work done
• clarifying expectations
• communicating well
• doing – execution

You can’t work “ON” your business if you are always working “IN” your business.  For you and your leadership team to develop, you must set regular times aside to remove yourself from the day-to-day activity to think and work on your business as a team.  To be smarter and faster and better, you actually need to stop, step out and refine your strategy.  It’s part of becoming a great leader / leadership team. 

Here is your one takeaway point for this week:

• Set some times on your calendar to work on your business with your leadership team.  If you are not already doing so, I would encourage you to follow The EOS Process.

Encouragement:  If you are insanely busy, start with small time blocks to work initially on eliminating and delegating anything you can to bring your life more into balance.  This will free more time to work on your business.

How Clarity Creates Value

Written by:  Mike Paton

If you’re familiar at all with EOS, you’ve heard or read the phrase, “Clarify, Simplify and Achieve Your Vision.” I’ve been thinking a lot about that phrase lately, and let me say explicitly that it’s a lot more than a tagline. 

Take just the first word – “Clarity.” A skeptic might find it easy to dismiss a word like that as a bit cliché, or as “easier said than done.” So how does clarity create real, enduring value? Let me count the ways: 

• More than 30 of my clients have made major “People Moves” after using the Accountability Chart, Core Values and People Analyzer to clearly identify the root causes of at least one frustrating and costly People Issue
• By answering the eight questions on the V/TO, another 30+ clients have aligned themselves around a common Vision. With everyone rowing in a single direction, the team spends less time worrying, analyzing and arguing, and more time getting things done.
• Clarity also helps create real value for your company when you reach outside the organization. Several of my clients have used the V/TO, Accountability Chart and other EOS Tools to quickly and clearly tell investors, key hires and strategic partners where they’re going and how they plan to get there.  

This last point can’t be stressed enough. An entrepreneur who can clearly explain where the business is going and how it plans to get there is surprisingly rare. It’s even better when you’re able to do that and show a potential partner that you have the right people and processes in place and have learned how to consistently execute on your plan. When you can do that, you’ll stand out as the owner of a rare and precious thing – a truly great business. 

Don’t take my word for it. I’ll close with a direct quote from the owner of a company just beginning its EOS journey:

“The V/TO was one of the single best selling tools I've ever had with an investor. In a very short period of time, he got what we were about, where we were going and how we planned to get there. It was pretty cool.”

Leadership Team Development #8 – LMA

Written by: Don Tinney

A brief recap. In developing a great leadership team, we have talked about some foundational building blocks.  You must:

• care about the people you are leading and managing
• clarify the major functions of your organization and select the right leader to drive and manage each function
• decide – indecision isn’t an option
• be all in – all 100% on the same page, sharing common values, a common purpose (your why) and a common thing you do to make the world a better place (your what).

One more point before we get to the mechanics of how to lead and manage more effectively. 

As leaders and managers, we often tell people what to do – assign work – and expect the work to be done.  We expect people to be accountable.  When things don’t get done as expected, we may default to punishments or rewards to try to make our people more accountable.  These rarely work to improve performance. 

Great Leadership + Great Management = Accountability.

In other words, accountability is the outcome or product of leaders and managers doing specific things.  There are hundreds of books out there to suggest what those specific things are.  At EOS Worldwide, we condense everything to 5 things a person must do to be a great leader and 5 things a person must do to be a great manager. 

Leading and managing are entirely different skill sets.  We’ll examine the difference in my next post.

Here are your takeaway points for this week:

• Commit to becoming a better leader and manager before expecting more from your people.  The accountability you are looking for will come as a by-product of your personal growth.
• You don’t have to read 100 books.  You just need to do a handful of important things that we’ll cover in the following weeks.
• A friend shared this 11 minute video clip with me this week to challenge our thinking about managing with incentives.  http://www.youtube.com/user/arcapex?blend=4&ob=4#p/a    

Encouragement:  If you haven’t been the best leader and manager in the past, don’t let that stop you.  Displaying your intention to improve and grow will provide a great example for your people to follow.  Again, it’s about progress, not perfection.

Helping Your Leadership Team Get More Done

Written by:  Gino Wickman

One of the most effective disciplines we teach all of our clients is compartmentalizing.

If you find your team juggling countless lists, priorities, and action items and don’t know where to start, compartmentalizing will help you put everything in its proper place. You’ll find yourself getting more done, feeling more focused, and being more organized. You can start today. Here’s how:

Take all your lists/priorities and put them in one of the following six compartments:

1.  Annual Goals:  The 3 to 7 most important priorities for the year go in this compartment.

2.  Quarterly Rocks:  The 3 to 7 most important priorities for the quarter go in this compartment.

3.  Weekly To-Do List:  Anything that is a one-week action item goes on the To-Do List and is tracked in your weekly leadership team meeting.

4.  Long-Term Issues List:  Every issue, problem, opportunity, or idea that you need to get to someday and don’t want to lose track of or can’t solve this quarter is put on your Long-Term Issues List (the parking lot).

5.  Short-Term Issues List:  Any issues that arise and must be solved during the quarter go onto your weekly leadership team meeting Issues List.

6.  Departmental Issues:  Issues that are departmental in nature get pushed down to the appropriate departmental weekly meeting Issues List.

This creates a simple system for managing all your priorities. It will free up your mind, and you’ll gain more traction.

Do it today!

Leadership Team Development #7 – Your What

Written by: Don Tinney

Great leaders keep themselves and their organizations focused on two things – their why and their what.  

If my passion as a leader is to enrich the lives of the elderly, I can live out that passion doing many things.  I can run an assisted living facility, provide charter tours to exciting places, create mobility devices, supply hearing aids, etc.  The list could get very long.  To be truly great at any of these, I need to focus my efforts – choose one thing I can excel at and enjoy doing.  With my why and what clear, I now have the foundation for a great business.  As a leader, all I need to do is bring people into my business who share my core values and passion, and have the capacity to do my what very well.

Here are your takeaway points for this week:

• If you started your business without a clear why and what and you’re still alive, sit down, with your leadership team if you have one, and clarify your why (your purpose, cause or passion) and what you are going to excel at to fulfill your why.  Pick something you can be great at and focus your organization on that.  Refer to TRACTION, ask an EOS Implementer or contact me if you need some help.
• If you have added people to your business who don’t share your core values and why, these people are wrong for your organization.  They will slow you down and make your journey more difficult. Replace them with people who care about what you care about.
• If you have added people who don’t do what you do very well, train them to increase their capacity or replace them with people who really get what you do, want to do what you do and are really good at doing what you do.

Encouragement:  When you have a clear why and what, and the right people on board, leading and managing is so much easier. 

The Journey

Written by: Simon Sinek on June 25, 2010 and shared here

I flew from Vancouver to Los Angeles on Alaska Airlines today. The plane was old. The seats were shabby and the crew did the minimum that was required to be considered "service." All in all it was a great flight.

I'm not being sarcastic.  It was a great flight. And the reason was because of the captain.

Once we were up in the air, he came on and started telling us what we could see out the windows.  "On the left side of the plane," he said, "you'll get a great view of Mt. Rainier."  Then he went on to tell us a bit about Mt. Rainier.  About 30 minutes later the captain came on again.  This time telling us about the Oregon River.  Later he told us about some lake that formed from a crater.  Each time he pointed things out, he would tell us a little something about it.  It was wonderful.

The plane was still old.  The seats were still shabby. The food was still bland, but the experience was really enjoyable. He transformed the experience of taking the bus, which is what air travel has become today, into a tour across the country.

I know it’s not an Alaska Airlines “thing,” it was just one chatty captain. But I hope airlines see the value of creating an experience and adopt this and other ways to enhance the time we spend on the plane.

It's not just airlines that can learn from this, it's anyone who serves someone they would call a customer or a client.  What matters more than all the stuff we throw at our customers is the journey we take them on to get that stuff. 

We expect a coffee shop to sell us coffee, for example. We take them from A to B, but it’s what happens on the way from A to B that matters more to creating loyalty.  We can get product B from any number of companies – but it's the journey that different companies take you on that makes the difference. You come into the coffee shop only wanting coffee, just like I took the flight just to get to where I needed to go.  But how the employee (and hopefully the company), decided to get me there made me want more.  The best part is, I completely ignored the shabby seats and old plane after that.

Take people on a memorable journey, and they won't notice the mistakes you make or the things you get wrong.  Ignore the journey and all they will notice is the mistakes you make and the things you get wrong.

Leadership Team Development #6 – Your Why

Written by:  Don Tinney

It is always a challenge to keep individuals and organizations focused, but that’s what great leaders do.  Distractions abound, but great leaders have an internal compass that keeps them from drifted off course. 

Two things set our bearings – our why and our what.

Focused organizations share a clear why - a common purpose, cause or passion.  If your purpose is making money, you’ll change course the moment a better money-making opportunity presents itself, and unfortunately, that happens to many individuals and organizations.  So, what’s yours?  Why do you and your people invest about one third of your lives together?  Are you engaged in something that matters?

 Here are your takeaway points for this week:

• You will never be a great leadership team if you don’t share a common purpose, cause or passion.  When distractions come, your team will quickly drift off course in different directions, and if your leaders are getting distracted, there’s not much hope for keeping the rest of the troops in line.  So, if your team isn’t focused, find or come back to your why.
• Simon Sinek has done some great work on this topic.  When you get a chance, I encourage you to watch the video below.  He also has a great book, Start With Why.

Encouragement:  Finding your why may take some effort if you’ve been operating without it for a while, but I assure you, life will be a lot richer when you get your bearings back.