What’s in Your V/TO™?

The Vision/Traction Organizer™ (V/TO™) is probably the most important document you’ll complete if you’re running your business on the Entrepreneurial Operating System®.

It is a unique, two-page template for organizing plans and forecasts the future of a company. Once completed, it acts as a time-management tool, helping you decide when to action each element of your strategy.

We have all seen simple one-page solutions for creating and organizing your company strategy, but the V/TO is different.

Usually, businesses devote a lot of time and resources to assigning committees to work on different sections of their business strategy. This frequently leads to the production of long 50 to 100 page documents which sometimes aren’t joined up with the big picture or aren’t simple to communicate.

The V/TO is unique because it organizes both the Vision Component™ of your business and includes your plan to make that vision a reality.

The simple approach involves answering The Eight Questions™ to get the entire leadership team thinking and working on the same page.

What’s in your V/TO?: The Vision page

The Vision page consists of five divided sections which helps to crystallize the components of your vision.

1. Core Values

This is all about “who” the company is and its culture. This is essential in order to define who fits the organization and who doesn’t. It is important to hire, fire, review, and reward based on your core values.​

2. Core Focus™

This is frequently referred to as ‘mission’, ‘vision’, or ‘voice’. It is all about defining why the company exists and identifying your superior skill. Once defined the combination of these two things helps you to stay focused. It is easy to get distracted by non-core activities.

3. 10-Year Target™

Businesses can select the time-horizon – five to 25 years. However typically, clients want a horizon of 10 years. This is equitable to your BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) and once defined helps everyone to see the big picture of the organization – where it’s going.

4. Marketing Strategy

This sets out how you sell your product or service and involves four simple steps:

1. Identifying the target market – your ideal list of customers ( also known as “The List”).
2. Defining the most attractive message for that target market (discovering your 3 Uniques™).
3. Capturing your proven process which is the way you provide your service or product to your customers.
4. Coming up with a guarantee where you pinpoint an industry-wide problem and solve it.

5. 3-Year Picture™

Here you paint a picture of what the company will look like three years from now. This helps everyone to see where the business will be and how they are part of it. It is divided into two parts: the specific targets of what you will achieve (future date, revenue, profit, and measurables), plus “what does it look like” where we paint a picture with the number of employees, clients, new products, market and sales efforts, awards you will win and so on.

Once you have a detailed, compelling 3-Year Picture, you move onto the second page of your V/TO – Traction.

What’s in your V/TO?: The Traction® page

The Traction page consists of three divided sections which help you execute the vision you have created.

6. 1-Year Plan

Once you have a compelling 3-Year Picture, you take one third of that picture to create your 1-Year Plan. As with the 3-Year Picture, you have the specific targets of what you will achieve in the next 12 months and you establish between one and seven SMART goals that will enable you to meet those specific targets.

7. Rocks

Here you set three to seven priorities for the business for the next 90 days. Most companies try to focus on too many objectives. Having no more than seven means you are more likely to achieve them.

8. Issues List

The final component of the Traction page is a list of all the issues the business is facing. This includes obstacles, challenges, problems, opportunities, and ideas which need to be discussed and agreed on by the team.

If you’re working with an EOS Implementer®, they will help to facilitate discovery exercises so that you can define and agree to these eight sections. This becomes an essential working document, continually referred to and updated every 90 days as your business progresses and grows.

Previously posted on the Infinity Group blog

Next Steps:

• Watch EOS Founder Gino Wickman describe the 8 Questions Your Leadership Team Should Answer to help you clarify your company vision
• Download a copy of the EOS V/TO™ to help you clarify, simplify, and achieve your vision
• Request a free 90 Minute Meeting with an EOS Implementer® to get a clear picture of what it looks like to run your company on EOS.