Why Do Vacations Throw Off Your EOS Process?

One of the easiest ways to throw off the EOS® Process™ for your entire company is by going on vacation. And summer is infamous for derailing businesses. Here’s what can happen.

Joe goes on a two-week vacation. Monday morning, the rest of his team runs their Level 10 Meeting. Suddenly they realize that no one knows if Joe’s Rocks are on-track. They don’t know if his To-Dos are done. They can’t discuss the Issues that Joe had added to the Issues List. They can’t take care of any of those things, and it creates a logjam of issues that slows the team down.

In two weeks, Joe returns but now Barb is out on vacation. Now you’ve got a cascading effect of complexity, and things are getting tied up that affect other areas of the organization.

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The Wrong Way to Handle Vacations

I’ve seen this happen for more than one of my clients. It’s especially problematic in the summer, when people throughout the organization are coming and going every week.

Some teams try to work around the problem by switching up their Level 10 Meeting times and dates whenever people are out of the office. But moving their meetings around ends up driving them bonkers and creates even more disruption. They might bump out their Quarterly Session or their weekly Level 10 Meetings. And it throws off the cadence of the organization.

On the other hand, teams that stay committed to the same day and time consistently gain more Traction™. So what do you do? Take away paid time-off?

Make The Meeting Pulse Your Top Priority

Get proactive around your Quarterly Sessions and Level 10 Meetings, and make them a top priority for your people. There’s a joke that the only two excuses for missing a Level 10 Meeting are vacation and death. While that might be pushing it a bit, the point is clear: there’s nothing more important than attending your Level 10 Meeting every week. Everything else gets scheduled around it.

Here’s how to do that:

1. Set a Rock to figure out when the leadership team’s Quarterlies will occur for the next 12 months.
2. Determine when your state-of-the-company meetings will be held – typically, one to two weeks after each leadership team Quarterly and Annual Planning Session. This creates the cascading effect throughout the organization.
3. Based on that timing, establish the departmental Quarterly and Annual Meeting dates. This gets you clear on when departments will be setting their Rocks and goals each quarter.
4. Establish the weekly schedules for every departmental Level 10 Meeting.

Now, everyone in your company can plan their vacations, client meetings, internal and external meetings, and business trips – all that other stuff that claims your time. Plan those commitments around your established Meeting Pulse™. There are no more excuses to miss the meetings.

How to Handle Vacations

Whenever you miss a Level 10 Meeting due to vacation, touch base with the person who runs the meeting in advance. Give them a rundown on the following items:

• Rocks: on-track or off-track
• To-Dos: done or not done
• Any Issues that are critical to be solved this week, along with pertinent information for discussion
• Scorecard numbers: on-track or off-track
• Any people headlines worth sharing with the team

Also, remind everyone in the Level 10 Meeting that you will be gone, and make sure someone will cover your position.

And when Joe comes back from vacation, be sure he is included in the cascading messages to update him on the details of the meeting he missed. Assign a To-Do to someone to follow up with him on the decisions from the Level 10 Meeting.

Gain Traction and Enjoy Vacation

As your people head out on vacation or go out of town on business travel, use these best practices to make sure that your Meeting Pulse keeps running effectively from one week to the next. You’ll keep clearing your Issues and completing To-Dos, and the cascading effect will help the rest of your company to keep gaining Traction.

Need help getting the most Traction out of EOS at your company? Read Get a Grip, then contact me to find out how I can help your business get to the next level.