What Happens If You Roll Out EOS Too Early?

Your leadership team is excited about the Entrepreneurial Operating System® and starting to see real improvements. You’re getting more done, communicating better, and starting to gain traction like never before. Time to start rolling out EOS throughout your company!

Not so fast.

Before you roll out EOS, read these cautionary tales and take note. There’s a time for everything – and when it comes to rolling out EOS, timing is everything.

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Early EOS Rollout Creates Twice the Work

I have a 100-employee client in Grand Rapids, Michigan whose leadership team is full of eager, hungry learners. Before I had my first meeting with them, they were already reading Traction and getting their arms around the EOS concepts. It was thrilling to see.

On Day One they wanted to roll out all the EOS tools after the Focus Day. I advised them not to, because they needed to practice EOS as a leadership team and work out the kinks first. They needed to more fully understand the Level 10 Meetings™, Rocks and Accountability Chart™ before they were ready to teach it to others.

But they were full of enthusiasm and couldn’t wait. So the leadership team rolled out Level 10 Meetings throughout the company within their first month with EOS. It didn’t go well.

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Because the Accountability Chart wasn’t complete, they had the wrong people attending the Level 10 Meetings. And because the team was new to the concepts, they taught EOS under their own interpretation. As the leadership team learned more, they realized they weren’t doing it right.

Not only did they need to fix their meetings at the leadership team level, but they also had to unteach the bad behaviors in each of their departments and reteach it the right way. They also had to move some people out of Level 10 Meetings and other people into the meetings.

Because of their enthusiasm for EOS, my client caused themselves a lot more work, and spent a lot of unnecessary time unteaching and reteaching the EOS tools.

Early Rollout Sets Teams Adrift

But this client isn’t alone. I have another client in Standish, Michigan, whose Finance department was eagerly learning about EOS. They rolled out Level 10 Meetings and Rocks before we started the EOS Process.

As a result, they got frustrated and things started to fizzle out. It felt like they were just treading water – trying to do EOS with no direction in mind. It was a tool in place with no direction.

They realized that they didn’t have cohesive agreement from the leadership team about the vision for the company, and they didn’t have a clear accountability structure. They were also implementing EOS incorrectly – they didn’t have a Scorecard, they didn’t understand how to use several tools.

There was a lot of frustration on the team, and it took the leadership team twice as long to reroll it out once they understood how to run EOS purely.

Make Your EOS Rollout a Success

It’s often tempting for leadership teams to roll out EOS too early. They begin to witness exciting changes happening on the leadership team, and they want to see them happen throughout the entire company.

But you’ll do more damage if you’re too eager. Your leadership team needs to practice the EOS tools and work out all the bugs. That’s what Focus Day, VB1 and VB2 are for. At that point, you should decide how much you’re ready to roll out at a time, and how far you’re ready to roll it out. Every leadership team moves at their own pace – the important part is that you agree what tools to roll out and within what time frame.

Need help implementing EOS the right way, or rolling it out successfully? Get a copy of Get a Grip – the EOS book that fleshes out exactly how to use EOS in your company. Or contact me to see how I can personally get you up and running with EOS!