Running More Disciplined on EOS®

Leslie Dickerson, the Integrator™ for Augeo, remembers hearing about EOS during a presentation at her Vistage group. Although intrigued, she sat on the information for nearly two years before getting serious about starting the process of Running on EOS™ in October 2018.

Formerly Wellington, the event planning business had gone through a series of growth spurts and needed to figure out ways to rein itself in. The leaders needed help to make things tangible and measurable while being a lean operation.

“We all sat in a room talking without accomplishing anything,” she said. “To do things right, we needed an outside entity to be our accountability partner and keep us on track.”

Leslie reached out to Certified EOS Implementer® Victoria Cabot, who’d given the presentation at Vistage. Before long, the leaders found themselves in daylong conversations about things they’d never thought of before.

Vision

The team’s first task was identifying who they wanted to be as an organization and outlining the business structure that would support their goals. It took them some time to get used to thinking about structure before identifying where specific people belonged in The Accountability Chart™.

“We needed someone to walk us through that different way of thinking,” Leslie said. “When I look back to our early sessions, they were emotionally draining. The leadership team had never really spent that much time together before, but we were finally getting to the root of things. It felt like a fresh start for us.”

Having delineated roles for the Visionary and the Integrator helped solidify their relationship. It also helped other leaders see how they could join conversations while understanding that the Integrator was the tiebreaker.

The leadership team also decided which business areas to focus on and which ones they could outsource. With a new laser focus, they tackled issues head-on.

Traction®

As the organization grew, the leadership team took steps to broaden their teams and build them out. When more and more people got involved in projects, Leslie saw they needed to communicate differently to ensure messaging reached everyone in the business.

So they put systems in place to set expectations and ensure their teams continued to deliver client work. Then they continued to hold one another accountable for meeting those expectations.

The transition made them so successful that Wellington was acquired by Augeo, a loyalty and engagement organization, in February 2021. Now they operate as a subsidiary under the larger Augeo umbrella, consistently using EOS Tools and concepts daily.

Healthy

Since working with their EOS Implementer, Augeo’s leadership team has ensured that everyone throughout the organization runs on EOS and holds each other accountable.

Leslie said they cherish the Level 10 Meetings™ because the structure keeps them on track. Even better, everyone feels comfortable sharing their opinions, asking questions, or raising issues.

“We still really work on IDS® and discipline, but we’re getting better every quarter,” Leslie said. “We’ve learned how to self-regulate and get to the root of a problem or issue.”