In the last four years, I’ve asked several hundred leaders from nearly 100 entrepreneurial companies to rate the level of “Organizational Accountability” in their companies from 1-10, with 10 being best. The average response?
Component: Traction
Make Your Meetings Great!
Assuming you’re having regular meetings with your leadership team—we recommend 90 minutes per week with the following Level 10 meeting agenda (download here)—there’s a way to improve, evolve, and perfect your meetings with a very simple discipline.
Get your business some true Traction
Traction, is a fantastic resource for business owners (one person businesses and up) who want to understand the PROCESS side of their business. The tag line for the book is “get a grip on your business”, which is exactly what this book is written to help you do. Guiding you through a process to think through the stages of HOW a business works and apply that to your own business. Like many business books, you are thinking about the parts of your business: vision, marketing, plans, obstacles, etc. But the difference in this book, is thinking about these concepts from a SYSTEMS approach. This is invaluable and the glue that binds many concepts together. Many business owners have many of the ingredients of their business (vision, mission, goals, etc.) but struggle to know how to implement all the elements in a system that is sustainable. The traction concepts help to put it all together in a process that supports the owner to stay focused, clear and positioned to move forward.
Without traction, no individual or organization accomplishes anything
As I began to read this book, I was reminded of a book co-authored by Chip and Dan Heath in which they explain why a few ideas “stick” but most don’t. It can also be said about business initiatives in that some have “traction” but most don’t. That is Gino Wickman’s core thesis. As he explains, most entrepreneurs experience one or (probably) more of five common frustrations: lack of control, underperforming workers, insufficient (if any) profits, limited growth potential, and dysfunctional operations. In a phrase, they can’t “get a grip” on their business. What they need is what Wickman characterizes as a “holistic, self-sustaining system that addresses the six aspects of a business”: Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process, and Traction. What he offers is the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) that, if “mastered” (i.e. installed and then maintained properly), will enable business leaders to integrate the six components of their business “into a powerful framework that will help [them] gain traction and realize the vision [they’ve] always had for [their] company.”
How to Have Effective Meetings
In considering all the different suggestions for how to have effective meetings, it’s important to focus on the desired outcome. Any meeting you conduct should first have clearly stated, meaningful objectives and a matching agenda to meet those objectives. Don’t meet because it just feels like you need a meeting.