Are You Ready to Get Up and Go?

It was a beautiful spring morning and I was feeling strong. Approaching the upcoming stoplight I could see that it would stay green and I could roll through the intersection at a pretty good pace. Then I remembered the stoplight marked the beginning of a segment that went all the way to the top of a mountain pass. My “Strava” ride-tracking app was running and at that moment I though “Today feels like a personal record (PR) kind of day!”

Really Pushing It!

I wanted to take advantage of my momentum and cover some ground before the mountain got steeper, so I got up out of the saddle and started to sprint. Still feeling good, I was really pushing it… And then, just seconds later, to my dismay, I heard a “POP”! I was at first relieved to sense no pain in my body (as I wondered if I had popped a tendon or something) and then I was a bit startled to hear rapid “clicking”. Something was not right. I had to stop and check it out.

As I inspected my bike, it became clear … My PR had been foiled by a broken spoke!

Oh the Stress!

Take a look at the photo above and try to appreciate the forces being applied to a bicycle in a sprint. Pro sprinters are often moving at 30 to 40 miles per hour and applying over 2000 watts of power through the pedals and into the back wheel. Look at the angles many of the bikes are in as the sprinters crank with all the energy of their legs. They pull with all of their core and upper body strength on the handlebars for leverage. A bike in sprint is experiencing a great deal of STRESS! Enough that if one of your components is weak it is prone to breaking and disrupting your plans for a win or a PR!

Disruptive Wobble

I wrapped the broken spoke around an adjacent one to keep it from rattling. Dejectedly, I changed my objective from PR to just making it back across the valley to my house. I immediately noticed that my wheel was wobbling. When I tried to go fast, it wobbled more. it would rub on my brakes. When I pushed hard after a stop sign it wobbled even more. I was experiencing a physical “law of nature”! A wheel with a broken spoke cannot go fast. It is out of integrity and cannot take the stress to “get up and go” without a lot of disruptive wobble.

Strong “Spokes” in Your Business

With this fact in mind I thought of the EOS Model®. It sort of looks like a bicycle wheel, right? I observe that a business operates in a similar fashion to a bicycle wheel. If all of the key components of the business (all six “spokes”) are strong, then the company can “Get Up and Go” in pursuit of the win! When the Six Key Components™ are ‘in integrity”, teams get what they really want from their business because when they want to go hard, or go fast, they are not faced with the debilitating wobble that comes from having one or several of the “spokes” broken or weak.

What Next?

Win Without Wobble

Let’s go to work on strengthening the Six Key Components™ of your business! As you learn and implement the tools and disciplines of The Entrepreneurial Operating System® you will ensure your business is strong. Let’s go set a PR for your business by ensuring it can carry you to the win without wobble!