Don’t ever agree to disagree.
Journey Stage: Getting Started
8 Questions to Achieve Your Company Vision: Have you Mapped Out Your Path for This Year?
So, you want to get to a specific location – let’s say Grand Island, Nebraska. To get there in the timeliest fashion you will need a specific tool – a map. Nowadays this map may come in other forms (GPS, your phone, print out from mapquest.com, etc.), but the fact remains you still need a map to get there. You need a map because you have never been there and you don’t know the way. Now, think about where you want to take your company. Have you been there before?
Company Core Values – Do You Believe?
I read a post on LinkedIn from Harvard Business School Professor Michael Wheeler, a behavioural economist (essentially a psychologist who tries to understand why we consistently do the seemingly irrational things we all do). You can see his post here. It describes an appalling situation – a British Marine was recently convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison for killing a wounded and helpless enemy fighter in Afghanistan. Wheeler postulated that only a clear statement of a core belief, “Marines Don’t Do That,” might have been enough to stop the soldier from committing what most view as a crime.
The G in GWC
In EOS terminology, GWC stands for Gets It, Wants It, and has the Capacity to do the job. It’s half of what we mean when we say you should follow the EOS analog to Jim Collin’s dictum and Get All the Right People in All the Right Seats. Besides sharing your values, each employee should be perfect for the position, or seat, being filled. I provide additional detail in an earlier post entitled How Do You Decide Who You Should Hire?
Accountability – To Be or Not to Be?
Those familiar with EOS know that an Accountability Chart crystallizes roles and responsibilities for everyone in the organization. It’s built by focusing first on the right structure for the organization – identifying the major functions (seats) necessary to execute on the company’s vision over the next 6-12 months and then carefully defining the five roles the owner of each seat must obsess about every day to be successful. Only then can you focus on getting the right people in the right seats. It’s a simple tool that clearly defines the things for which every single person in the organization is accountable.
Accountability for Owners
One of the biggest challenges faced by owner-operators is accepting that they are accountable in a detailed way for the success of their business.