Maybe you’re just going about it in the wrong way.
Do you hear yourself saying to yourself over and over: “if I can just get this one big client”, “if I just work harder and longer”, or “I need to do a better job in finding the right people to work with me instead of working against me?”, and then I’ll be successful and can take a little break?
And do you scoff at those who tell you smugly that you need to work “on” the business when you don’t even have time “in” the business to deal with the 99 problems that need to be addressed today?
Yep, done that. I’ve banged my head against that same wall that you have. I had a good business, making good money. But along with my leadership team, I became trapped, and didn’t know how to get out of it. What was missing?
We needed something proven to produce results.
We’d discovered the answer – we needed a “business operating system”, a system that would align the team’s daily activities with its goals, keeping everyone – including the leadership team – accountable and focused on the company, all to make traction towards those longer term goals.
At different times over the past 15 years, my companies implemented the E-Myth® and the Rockefeller Habits®, both of which are excellent systems and helped improve the organization.
But neither stuck. We needed something simple.
It wasn’t until 2013 – while the business was in the throes of a seemingly death spiral, with huge losses, high turnover and unhappy staff and clients – that we were introduced to the book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, by Gino Wickman, which teaches EOS, short for the Entrepreneurial Operating System®. Although very suspect of using ‘another’ operating system, I quickly realized that EOS was the system that we could truly follow. It is a simple system, and it was hard work, but the company experienced a $750,000 turnaround in less than one year, moving from a dying to very profitable company, with happy clients and a happier – and more importantly – cohesive team. My role in the transition was as the “integrator”, the leader glue that held it all together and to help the team achieve the vision it (re)set for itself. I sold my partnership shares to my remaining partners’ capable hands, and started this company to share what I’ve learned with other companies.
What an Operating System does for your business
First let’s be clear on what an operating system is not. It’s not a one day seminar, feel good ‘you can be great if you only believe in yourself’ system. It’s also not something you just plug in and let run itself.
What an operating system IS is a tried and true “way” that sets goals and strategy in motion, gets the right people on the bus, finds and solves issues, then consistently ensures that priorities and accountability is clear and followed across the entire organization.
The best operating systems focus in a short term world to gain long term results. EOS does that.
What does an operating system do for you, the leader?
Imagine that you aren’t trying to build or maintain your company by your sheer will alone.
Rather, imagine you’ve followed a system in that you and your leadership team have clarified your vision, you’ve only hired the right people, working in the right places, working on the right things, all working towards the same vision and goals, regularly knocking down the issues as they inevitably arise, and all being accountable to their own actions as well as the team’s actions. And imagine that by doing that, you’ve built a great business instead of merely a good business. And by doing that, it ensures that not only can you ‘sleep at night’, but that you are truly happy again. Impossible? Hardly. That’s what an operating system will do for you, if only you will get of your own way and begin.
Ready to reach the top of the mountain?
It’s possible, and closer than you know. Let me show you how EOS won us over and has changed the lives of EOS clients everywhere.