Episode Overview
What does it look like to build, lose, rebuild, and eventually step fully into the work you’re meant to do? In this episode of Real Talk with an EOS Implementer, Mark O’Donnell, Visionary at EOS Worldwide, meets with longtime EOS Implementer Mark Stanley for a wide-ranging conversation that traces a career shaped by disruption, experimentation, and hard-earned perspective.
Mark shares how early experiences in corporate finance and continuous improvement laid the groundwork for entrepreneurship, how tragedy forced an unexpected pivot, and how the WHY! Company evolved through multiple distinct chapters before he committed to implementing full time. Along the way, he reflects on lessons learned from owning manufacturing and distribution businesses, navigating economic volatility, and discovering where his energy and strengths truly belonged.
The conversation also explores Mark’s vantage point as one of the earliest EOS Implementers. What it was like before widespread adoption, how the implementer community changed over time, and why accountability, measurement, and clarity consistently separate teams that stall from those that scale. The episode closes with a look at Mark’s passion for data, the thinking behind his upcoming book, and what it means to measure impact not just inside companies, but across a career.
Key Takeaways
- Disruption often reveals where leaders truly belong: Major external shocks can force hard pivots, but they also clarify whether a leader is meant to run a business day to day or support others from a different seat.
- Operational tools don’t eliminate volatility, but they create resilience: EOS can’t control market swings or economic shocks, yet consistent disciplines give leadership teams the clarity and stamina to endure them.
- Accountability charts outperform org charts when planning for the future: Treating roles as seats, not titles, helps teams think ahead, identify gaps, and build succession intentionally rather than reactively.
- High performers want to know the score: Clear measurables give strong leaders feedback they crave, reinforce accountability, and naturally surface where performance or capacity is misaligned.
- Long-term impact becomes visible when results are aggregated: Measuring success across clients, teams, and years reveals a broader form of contribution that individual wins alone can’t capture.
- Data reduces uncertainty by improving predictability, not perfection: Consistently tracking the right inputs lowers variation, sharpens decision-making, and replaces gut feel with informed confidence over time.
Full Episode Transcript
Early Career to Ownership
0:01
O’Donnell: Hey there, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Today I have Mark Stanley, expert EOS implementer and coauthor of the upcoming book Data. He and I, along with Angela Kalmas, have been working on that book, so I’m excited to have this conversation. Thanks for jumping on, Mark.
Stanley: All right, thank you, Mark. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.
O’Donnell: Awesome. So I would love to hear your entrepreneurial story, your entrepreneurial journey. I find that implementers have really interesting, fantastic stories, and I just love having these conversations. I get to learn a little bit about implementers, and so does the rest of the world. So just kick it off. Tell us your story. How’d you get here?
Stanley: Interesting. So, you know, I came out of school with a finance background and got an MBA. I went and worked for a larger entrepreneurial business in town called Ruan. Ruan had a great success story. I was there for 10 years. I did finance and corporate finance for three years. I did continuous quality improvement for about seven years. Then I ended my career there doing kind of corporate strategy work inside the company.
But it was super entrepreneurial. Out of that company came about four or five different people who went and formed their own companies or did other things. So it was a great breeding ground for me for that entrepreneurial spirit. I left there in 2000. I purchased a manufacturing company with two other people. We did that for a number of years.
9/11 hit during that time, unfortunately. That kind of put a cascading series of events into motion. We lost 60% of our revenue, which kind of forced me to do something different. And I created the WHY! Company.
So the WHY! Company has been around for about 20, 23 years. It’s had three lives. The first life it had, we did Lean Six Sigma Theory of Constraints training, and we trained belts. We did about 2,000 belts over about a seven-year period. The second life it had involved Theory of Constraints and supply chain consulting. I did that with a small band of consultants, traveling around the country. I’d leave Sunday and come home Friday.
It was during that time that I was working with a client and got handed the book Traction. Someone said, “You should read this.” This was December of ’08, so I was an early adopter. I went to bootcamp in February of 2009. I think I’m number nine. I call myself number nine, for lack of a better word. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but when we started this, it was just Gino and a handful of people in a room in his office in Livonia.
Don Tinney was there, Gina was there, Mike Payton was there, Walt Brown was there, Renee was there. I was in the class with Ed. So now I think we’re collectively maybe called the OGs, but I’m not sure. At that point, there were only about 300 companies operating on EOS. Today, the numbers are closing in on 26,000.
O’Donnell: Yes, you are.
Stanley: At that time, there were maybe nine or ten implementers. Today, I think we’re well over 800. I’m not perfect on those numbers, but it’s been a great avenue of success for a lot of entrepreneurial individuals inside EOS—both implementers and the companies they serve.
Along the way, I’ve had the WHY! Company for about 20 years. In addition to that, I had the manufacturing company, and I also purchased a steel distribution company that I owned for about six years. I also had a home-building business for about four years. I wound all of that up in 2015 and started EOS full-time in 2016. I’m nearing 1,500 session days, which I should hit in December. That’s a lot of sessions, and that’s working with about 100 clients.
O’Donnell: Wow, that’s a lot of sessions.
Stanley: I’m at 98, 99, 100—right in there. So keep about 30 active at any one point during the course of the year and do about, today still doing about 145 or 150 session days a year.
O’Donnell: Yeah. So a couple, let’s yeah. I mean that, that was super quick and here we are, but I have a lot of questions. Yeah. So that’s okay. you know, taking us back to the, first manufacturing company that you bought in nine 11 hits, what made you start the WHY! Company.
Stanley: That kind of cage up to today. Please, yep. Go easy.
O’Donnell: First place because it seems like you went from manufacturing, producing some product to more consulting and advising around manufacturing processes and best practices and things.
Stanley: Yeah. Yeah, I probably, I probably missed a fun fact in there. I actually created the WHY! Company first before I left Ruon and actually had that going. At that point it was called the How Company and that was a medical company with me and another gentleman. And then I had an opportunity. So in my last 90 days at Ruon, I was doing full-time at Ruon, taking time off to do How Company work. And then in the
O’Donnell: Nah.
Origins of WHY! Company
5:30
Stanley: Around Thanksgiving of that 1999 period, they accepted our offer to buy the business. so coming into January one, I had to kind of mothball Howe Company. And then it got re-emerged as the WHY! Company. And so WHY! Company is really a joke among friends. And so we were good at data analysis. We would take the statistics, take reams of data, pull them down into charts and graphs, and then lay them out on what we call the brown paper.
The brown paper is four feet wide, it’s butcher paper. We’d maybe do 20 feet long and we would lay charts and graphs down on an input process output basis and we would tell a story. So instead of doing a slide deck like PowerPoint on the TV or the screen, we would like kind of lay out the movie on the brown paper. So when I was kind of winding, kind of pulling it out of the manufacturing business, I had my friends at the Howe Company who un-mockballed it and created it.
And they said, we need help. said, great, what do you need? So we did a brown paper. I need to invoice them. I don’t know how to invoice it, right? What’s the name? So I invoiced it to Howe Company from Whye Company. And the Whye Company was, you you guys know how, but you don’t know why. And I just gave you a whole reason on why you need to do what you do at the stats and analysis.
And he sends me back the logo, Jeff Barber, good friend of mine, my best mentor along the way. I worked with him at Ruan and unfortunately just passed away a few weeks ago. So we lost a great one there, but he sends me back the logo. The Howe Company logo is a circle with a question mark. The WHY! Company logo is a circle with the exclamation point with WHY underneath. So the thing is, why was it started as a joke among friends? I don’t always tell that part of the story.
O’Donnell: Yeah.
Stanley: So we were already doing kind of consulting work. And when I was in my last few years at Ruan, we were actually taking this methodology out to some Ruan customers and doing the work for them and then billing and invoicing it. So I’ve always had kind of that consulting kind of, you know, in my blood and that entrepreneurial thing in my blood. And what was exciting about, you know, when I first read the Chakra book, I was actually creating my own model. had nine parts to the puzzle.
O’Donnell: Yeah, yeah.
Stanley: because I didn’t want to do consulting work anymore, supply chain stuff. I was on the road too much. But I was creating a model. I had, again, nine components to it, very similar to the EOS model. And when I read the traction book, I go, uh-oh, dang, this is really good. I can not compete with this. This is so simple and so concise and so real that I’m just going to join the club. And that’s how I made the decision to kind of mothball the work that I had been doing and do that.
O’Donnell: So you said you didn’t go all in full time as an implementer until 2016 and you had the steel company and the other manufacturing company. Did you implement EOS into those businesses?
Stanley: Yeah, we did. Yep. Yep, we did. And you know, the steel distribution business was, you we bought it from a gentleman, Irv Robinson. Irv was awesome. Irv had a lot of cash, you know, after running the business for 60 years. And we purchased it also at the end of 08, going into 09. So about the same time I was doing EOS or starting EOS. And at that point, we bought all of this steel from Irv’s inventory.
for $1.4 million on the last day of 08 at the exact time the steel prices were highest in steel history. And by June, July 1 of 09, they were the lowest in steel history. And we lost 600,000 in working capital over a six month period. That was a fun ride. And then I got a real lesson on commodities. So from there, so.
O’Donnell: Ouch. Don’t trade in them.
9:31
Stanley: Don’t trade in them and steel is of course a commodity and it was up and down and when steel prices were up, gross margin was, so imagine we keep gross margin at 30%, but when steel prices double, 30%, that mark, the dollar’s double, but when it’s half, it’s also in half and your operating expense, your fixed expense doesn’t change that much. So we had trucks, drivers and people working, it was a small shop.
And, but we, we, and I, I don’t know if you recall as well what’s happening during that period of time. 08, 09 would be what I would think of as either the lesser depression or the greater recession. And so not only, you know, so we purchased the business that was 6 million revenue at, we had 10 % EBITDA. So it was 600,000 EBITDA. Pretty good business.
But at that point, revenue dropped to, for steel prices being down, it also the market dropped to 3 million and our margin went from 30 % down to 18%. So we were taking it really hard on the chin in 09. And so, that wasn’t a lot of fun. I got a real lesson. EOS helped us in all reality, but EOS is going to do nothing for you in that kind of market volatility.
I mean, it does get your energy together and we were doing rocks and we had the VTO and we had the scorecard. The scorecard just showed up red. We dropped as much operating expense as we could, but we still have to put trucks on the road and put steel on the trucks and deliver steel to the client because that was our value proposition and we just had to kind of suck it up during that point in time. you know, we got through that period of time.
O’Donnell: Right.
Stanley: And then over those next few years, I had it up until about 2016. I had a business partner die during that time and some change in leadership and ownership. And I ended up with a hundred percent of the business where at one point I was only 25%. And then I just, I lost my passion for it. So I sold it off and decided to exit. I wouldn’t say on the upside of that business, but it’s in the rear view mirror.
O’Donnell: Yeah.
Stanley: But my first love is really, my first love is actually working with other entrepreneurial leaders and helping them with, get where they want to go. I find I’m better at that than really running my own shop. Less risk, less sleepless nights.
O’Donnell: Yeah.
O’Donnell: Well, I always say like the, there’s so much freedom in being an implementer where you work with your clients. have a huge impact on the way they’re operating their energy and they’re really excited. And then you leave that session room with no to do’s free as a bird. I mean, there’s really nothing better than that. not much anyway.
Stanley: Exactly. If I do get any to-do’s, which is rare, I have that wrapped up before we do next steps conclude. I said, I’m going to take care of this right now. We’re done. So I’m not walking out of this room with a to-do. But you know, mean, the impact, you look back, I have a little plaque on my wall in my studio for every one of the customers or clients I’ve worked with. And one day I was, I should admit this, but I was a little bored in an issue solving session with an issue that was kind of droning on.
O’Donnell: Right.
Measuring Collective Impact
Stanley: I decided to count the plaques and I counted the last known revenue of where I was when I knew them. And I’ve got a pretty good idea of where that was over 95 plaques or 98 plaques. And then what the headcount would be on that. And I think that, you know, I ended up with about 16 billion, give or take a billion of folks on the board and 15 or 16,000 people, you know, that have an impact just directly for the things that I’ve worked with, you know, and
O’Donnell: Yeah.
Stanley: I felt a certain amount of reward in that. Like, okay, we are making a difference and not just on a one by one, but when you aggregate it, it’s been pretty impactful. So that fills my cup. So I don’t know it today if I could do anything else other than be an EOS implementer. I don’t have a desire to do anything else. It’s my passion and I love what I do.
O’Donnell: Yeah.
Stanley: I’m in my unique ability every day. So people ask me, how am I going to keep doing it? I’m like, till I can’t. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. As long as I can, as long as I feel like I can continue to add value, I want to do it as long as I can.
O’Donnell: Yeah, as.
O’Donnell: Right, I mean it’s really a life sentence, ultimately, right?
O’Donnell: Yeah. So you entered into the implementer community and interesting point in time. And I’m curious if you were present in the switch from the previous model of EOS to the membership model. So I’m going to, I’ll lay out the story and you can tell me if you came in after that, before that you experienced what I’m about to say. So.
Stanley: Yep.
14:45
O’Donnell: I believe it was June or the end of 2008, June, 2009, Gino Wickman, who’s our founder along with John Tinney, our co-founder, they just said, Hey, things aren’t going well. We’re going to give this till June. And if it doesn’t turn around, we’re going to shut it down. So they didn’t know what to do. And Gino went off to a Starbucks that he’s apt to do.
And he reads two books, tribes by Seth Godin and starfish and the spider and comes lays out what he believes is the new abundance minded abundance based approach to the implementer community. Cause before then it was 15 % of revenue. Everybody had the 20% and he was like, hey, you know.
Stanley: Funny.
O’Donnell: 20% of zero zero. And the way he tells it is that he was about to give them the scariest pitch of his life that we’re going to go to a monthly fee and there’s just going to be a flat monthly fee to be an implementer, no percentage of revenue. And you’ve got to take care of your own brand, your own things. And we’re going to, you’re going to pay for a quarterly collaborative exchange.
And once we’re going to get together once a quarter. And so he’s like, Hey, I, did the pitch and the people who were not making it. Left almost immediately because they had to now pay something per month without any revenue. And the people who were making money were like, this is the best day ever. And Mike Payton said, Hey, I think you just bought me a new car. Cause you know, he didn’t have to pay Geno 60 grand a year anymore. So did you experience that? Were you there when he gave that talk?
Stanley: Yeah, was in there during that switch. I didn’t know the backstory about the Starbucks time and the two books and scariest time, you these kind of pitches. you know, originally I was, so I was an under performer in that, you know, coming out of bootcamp, which was not called that at that point, but in February, and I was a slow starter. had my, you know, my training business with Lean and Six Sigma and I was going to try to get this started. So I’m doing the math and I’m like, hmm.
You know, I think when I get this thing going, I think this is a far better deal at like the $195 a month versus the 20%. But originally this kind of threw me off a little bit because because I wasn’t paying the 20, you know, I had zero revenue and I wasn’t paying the 20 % of zero zero. At that point, we didn’t pay for boot camp either. So boot camp was free and.
And so I was there that day. Originally, I was thinking that this was not such a good deal. But then about one day later, I started doing the math and said, this is like the best deal ever. I’m with Peyton on that one. so that continued. Every couple of years, get the, hey, got news for you. I got good news and bad news.
Good news is I love you. Bad news is the fees going up. But it’s still the best deal on the planet, you know, even at the monthly fee that it is today. Not asking for anybody to change it. Just happy. Just happy.
O’Donnell: Well, of course, last quarter I had that exact, I love you conversation. Yup. yeah, I’m just interested because you have experienced really all versions of life that EOS has gone through from a somewhat of a franchise, more traditional franchise type style pre that 2009. Then you’ve got the membership model sort of. That turned out to be 730 different brand names and things, monthly fee to now one brand under the EOS franchise model. However, we’ve retained no territories, no percentage of revenue and that same monthly flat fee. So you’re one of the very few people who’ve experienced all three.
Stanley: Yeah. It’s a great model. Yeah. I was, I was early on in that. Yeah. And you know, there’s lots of stories from those early days. You know, I think the hotel we stayed, I think the hotel we stayed in Livonia, like the Ramada Inn, I think they tore it down like even five years ago or so. But, yeah, it was, it needed to be tore down when we were there. but we would.
O’Donnell: Yeah, I bet. Did they?
Early Implementer Adventures
Stanley: There would be a group of us that would white knuckle it back. We’d rent a car and we white knuckle it back to the airport from Livonia. Whoever had the last flight was the driver and had to turn the rental car in. They’d dump people off. We’d roll out of the car real quick, fly in and hope we can make the flight. Then whoever had the last flight out dropped the car off. There were some fun days in there where you’re getting together and you knew everybody.
It was a lot of fun. You’re kind of feeling like maybe you’re taking on the world, know, tipping some windmills. And it was fun. And without the resources too, you know, you’re like, you mean, have to go find my own leads. Well, yeah, we’re never going to find leads for you. You’re going to have to do that on your own. Later on, kind of the warm lead machine comes and you know, when there’s 300 companies operating on EOS and like at that point and like
150 of those are Geno’s and, know, Peyton had maybe 70 of those. know, the, the, the, the, it’s not very a wide circle of what you’re up to. And it was in, you know, Southwest Michigan. Geno never called it Detroit for whatever, or Southeastern Michigan, never called it Detroit for whatever the reason. Peyton was kind of in Columbus in Minneapolis, you know, and then Alan Richardson and I, Alan is actually the one who gave me the book. He was in the class with me with Ed at that point in February of 09.
You know, we’re trying to get this thing going in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids and send out a hundred books and people don’t know what is this thing called EOS or this book called Traction. You at that point it’d have been out maybe two years, but right now there’s a lot of brand awareness on it and what it is. So I would hope it’s easier today to kind of get the ball rolling.
But I didn’t start really, I was doing probably maybe 40 or 50 session days a year up through 09 to about 15. And then I was shutting down a long-term project I had. And I had a project where I helped one of my clients buy vineyards and wineries in Italy. And I did that project for 14 months at the end of 14, all through 15. And I said, I’m gonna give you 40 % of my time. I had another longer-term project for about six years where I was…
back and forth to Pennsylvania and back about half my time. But I switched it to this wine, wine buying venture, which was amazing. Best project I’ve ever done in my entire life. He calls me up. He calls me up. says, listen, he texts me actually how much capacity do you have? And I’m like, I know the source. And I said, well, it depends, right? But we should talk about it. He goes, I want to buy vineyards and wineries in Italy and I need help kind of pulling it together.
I said, I’m in, because you said three of my favorite things, wine, Italy, and I get paid. It’s a project. So I said, can go wrong? And towards the end, when I wrapped that project up at the end of 15, I wrapped it up with a slide. said, 14 months later, I shouldn’t tell you this, but I would have done it for any two of those three things. So you say, right?
O’Donnell: Yeah, what could go wrong with that?
O’Donnell: Alright.
Stanley: Wine and get paid, I’m in, Italy and wine, I’m in, Italy and get paid, I’m in. But anyways, it was a good run. then I’m really like, okay, now I have to do EOS full time. So that project got me sidetracked a little bit. But then I filled the hole quickly. I had a 40 % hole in my revenue at that time going into 2016. So I went back to my clients, I said, listen,
You know, what I do is referral based. And if you know anybody like you, entrepreneurial folks that think they could benefit from what I do, I would love the introduction. within really two or three months, had the, I was off and running, I had the whole field. So it’s a testament to the really great, really great, you know, so EOS done well creates rating fans. And so they want to share it with others.
Accountability Chart Impact
23:51
O’Donnell: Yeah. What do you think has been the biggest impact out of the tools you’ve worked with and done more sessions than almost anyone? What, if you had to pick, what’s the one thing that consistently produces the biggest impact?
Stanley: You know, I would have to say the accountability chart. And in addition to that, you know, the people analyzer, kind of right people, right seat. And I work really hard with clients to make sure that’s down and that’s solid. And I want them to obsess about right people, right seat, you know, and that accountability chart gives you the visual. I said, treat it like a depth chart, you know, and treat it like…
If you were a coach and you had a team, pick whatever team you want, soccer, football, basketball, and you wanted to get the right people on the team that had and share the core values of the team and the program that you were trying to put in place. And then you wanted to work them right, right? So you wanted to get the right people in the right seats. And then you had, you can work succession plan, like, okay, if this person exits the business, who’s my next up in there? And you can look at and say, all right, three years from today,
What if I do an accountability chart three years from today? Where are the open seats? And then how do I help people, you know, see that there’s a future and there’s maybe a succession in those or see where the holes are. But it really kind of, and then use your intuition about, you know, if there’s drama around somebody, you know, there’s probably a core values that’s not fitting well. If somebody’s not performing well in the seat, they’re maybe not getting it, wanting it to have capacity.
And so I think probably pound for pound, the accountability chart is probably the most, the tool that probably has the most impact on an organization. You know, I can make an argument that all of the five foundational tools kind of do on their own way, but I think pound for pound, think it’s the accountability chart. Yep.
O’Donnell: Awesome. So just to get into the book that we wrote together, data going from uncertainty to unstoppable. What, what makes you really passionate about that topic and what do you hope people get when they read the book, which is coming out in April of 25, people will be able to get their hands on that one.
Stanley: I’m excited about that.
Stanley: Yeah.
O’Donnell: What are you most excited about? What’s the impact that you’re like, Hey, if we do this, it’s a win.
Stanley: Yeah, so if you look at my strengths finders, I’m a strategy analyst by nature. so, you know, coming out of Lean and Six Sigma Theory of Constraints, I was most drawn to the two components of the model, the data and the process component. And, you know, both, thought data was a little bit underpowered, you know, have a scorecard as a discipline, everyone has and knows their number for the measurable. And then eight casual drivers isn’t really in the data component.
You know, per se, right? It’s not a, it’s not a, imagine if we’re a third discipline, it might be in there. So, and I think there’s, you know, if you work with entrepreneurial folks, myself included, who’ve had business along the way, you know, you’re never certain. Right. About, you know, is this working? And part of that data analytics is I’m looking for correlations, you know, Hey, if we do this, will we get that right? If we, if we impact X, will we get the Y factor that looking for. I think, you know, clearly, if you take the just take scorecard, you say I’m taking the 12 to 15 measures on the input side of the business that are driving the business and I can those are X factors for me. And I could say that I can look at it over 13 week and then part of that statistical stuff, if you will, that I had from the past leads you to a prediction. So the variation is low.
I have a much better idea of what the prediction is going to be for the next week and the next week and next week. So for me, it helps you take variation out of your processes to get better predictability. So I’m connecting a couple of things in there. So, but first thing is get your numbers down, know what they are, what’s driving what, if you can on the correlation, and then make sure that you’re looking at them so you can make good predictions. Then that gives you more security and takes some of that uncertainty away. And the second part of that, is if everybody, if we can get everybody on the accountability chart back to the tool, you know, what I tend to do is say, here’s the title for the seat, here’s the roles and responsibilities, then can we get one, two, and no more than three measures for that seat to know that that person’s successful?
So as you work with, you know, high performing teams, you know, the best teams that want to be great want to use EOS and that measurable helps the high performers know how they’re performing. It gives them feedback. And so high performers love to know how they’re doing. You know, this year the pole vault record was created at the, I think it was ahead of the Olympics, but the gentleman won it at the Olympics, had the gold, decided to put the bar up to go for the world record again in front of a large crowd. Now, why is he doing that? Why is that interesting? He’s already got the gold.
He’s a high performer, wants to see if he can set the record. And high performers do that. So high performers love to work with other high performers. High performers want to have and know the score, and it runs off the people that aren’t wanting to be accountable or low performers, and it gives more room for higher performers. So that measurable component. Then the eight cash flow drivers. I haven’t known an owner of a business or a leadership team that had a business that didn’t worry at some point about cash.
Right and how to generate more of it. So whether they’re growing too fast and cash is being becoming tight because you know, of course, growth takes cash or like we were in the steel industry, we were we were fighting for cash when our gross margin sunk because the price of steel went down, right? And so now we’re fighting on the on the other side of it saying what do we do? So cash is oxygen for the business. You don’t think about it when you’ve got plenty of oxygen, but you sure thinking about it when oxygen.
O’Donnell: You’re right.
Stanley: Auctioneers running short. And so what I’m excited about the data book is we’re taking that scorecard and really taking what was taken written in the traction book, you know, that was maybe 10 to 12 pages and blowing it out to 187 pages around scorecard around everybody has and knows the number measurable, which has been a little bit nebulous. I think that that body of work hasn’t been, you know, really gone deep on.
Scorecards are every, know, there’s a lot of places you can find information on scorecard and KPIs. Measurables are a little bit harder to find. And any cashflow drivers is, you know, kind of see in the light of day outside of just those ideas and just outside of just those that work with EOS implementers who have seen it in the course of a quarterly session. So, you know, a little bit of the secret sauce in there.
O’Donnell: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I’m excited about it. April will be.
Data Drives Accountability
31:02
Stanley: And yeah, how about you? What’s exciting you about it?
O’Donnell: Lots of things. think the biggest impact that we can make is that we revealed in the book, the very interconnected nature of that data component as it relates to all the other tools. Just as you said with the accountability chart, yes, of course the Scorecard’s obvious. And then how are you thinking about each role in the business, your processes, and how it’s all tying together to measure.
And run your business using real objective data. And I would call it more of an amped up version of accountability broadly. So I’m excited for that and getting people thinking in the mindsets of how do you measure things? And it’s not actually very difficult or sophisticated or hard. You just got to think in reverse and you can can do it. So that’s what I’m, I’m really excited about that.
Stanley: Yeah.
Stanley: No.
Stanley: Yeah. If it’s keep it simple, keep it simple. And I think I feel pretty good that we’ve done it. I think we’ve done a really extraordinary, extraordinary job of keeping it simple in the book and give us some really practical tools and things to think about reflective questions after each chapter, little tool section on the back to kind of help you or tools and techniques and templates that kind of help you get, get the brain going and thinking about it. But I’m excited about it. I can’t wait, you know,
I was, you know, I can’t wait. As you know, I’m working on the outline for the presentation. I’m a little behind. And so even going through that this morning and talking and kind of doing the setup for it about, you know, uncertainty and how you feel about that as an entrepreneur. Maybe you started business from scratch or maybe you purchased a business and now you have this as I have a couple of times like, crap moments where you’re like.
O’Donnell: Right.
Stanley: Now, I got to figure out what to do, you know, and take it on from somebody else and that level of, you know, it’s an anxiousness, but there’s an uncertainty. you know, there’s lots of do I have this right? Am I making good decisions? so, and then also, you know, along the way when the business starts to hit the ceiling, there’s that gnawing at your gut where, you know, the thing is running successfully, but there’s something gnawing at you like,
There’s just something off and I can’t put a finger on it. And then how data can help you kind of work through that. So it’s, it’ll, excited to get it into the world.
O’Donnell: Yes. And then you just hope the rest of the world thinks your baby is cute enough. Yeah.
Stanley: Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, I would it would be yeah, I’m super excited about it. Again, I think it’s probably one of the more and one of the more underdeveloped kind of areas of the EOS of the EOS model. But
O’Donnell: Yeah. Well, so Mark, I appreciate the conversation and just love the collaboration that we had on the data book and I’m sure that we will have an impact. So thanks for coming on my show here and I appreciate it.
Stanley: Likewise.
Stanley: Thanks for having me.
Stanley: All right, thanks, Mark. Enjoyed every second of it. All right, thank you. All right, bye-bye.
O’Donnell: All right, thank you. All right, see ya. Bye.
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