Parts & Pieces

Early this month, I was giving a presentation to a room of business owners about EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System). One of the business owners came up to me after the meeting and was giving me some kudos for the presentation. After he was done, he said, “You know there is one thing you should add to your presentation.” I thought, “Ok, I guess he was just sugar coating his criticism.” He pointed out that many of the businesses in the room had been around for a while and most likely were doing some of the things we talked about. “Parts and pieces,” he said, as in parts and pieces of the Six Key Components of successful businesses. He admitted that they may not be implemented in the most effective way but that some of the pieces were probably there. For him, the value of EOS was how the system pulled everything together.

He ended up using an analogy I use all the time. He said, “What happens, Jim, is you end up having a wheel that rolls but with a big thud every time it goes around.” He was referencing that even with having some of the pieces, if you don’t have them all and they aren’t all connected into one set process, you end up not having a very efficient machine or in this case, company.

I thought this was a very astute observation about EOS and business in general. There is a lot of power in the EOS approach but it’s true value is only seen when you bring all the pieces together in concert with one another. How true this is for many things in life. It is only when the whole is in unison, is it really whole. Thanks Michael.