Implementer Posts
The Most Honest Score of the Year
They rated my day a 6.9. It was the most honest number I got all year. Two men on this team have not told each other the truth in eleven months. In a real room, they would sit as far apart as the table allows. One speaks, the other looks at his laptop. Neither one ever says the other’s name. I knew that going in. I knew this needed to be a room in the physical world. They wanted virtual. The usual cost-cutting math. I let them talk me into it against my better judgment. Virtual works when you are moving pieces on the chessboard. Goals, rocks, IDS, to-dos, next. Virtual does not work when the real issue is trust. Map it to Patrick Lencioni and this team is all bottom of the pyramid. A webcam hides everything I need. The arms crossing. The jaw setting. Who leans in when
When Loyalty Keeps Someone in the Wrong Seat
Some of the hardest people decisions in business are not about poor performers. They are about good people who have been loyal, committed & valuable for years, but are no longer in the right seat. That is much harder. If someone is clearly underperforming, behaving badly or refusing to meet expectations, the conversation is relatively straightforward. But what happens when the person is trusted, liked, hardworking & deeply connected to the business? That is where loyalty can start getting in the way of clarity. Loyalty Is Valuable, but It Is Not a Job Description I value loyalty enormously. Someone who has stood by the business through difficult years, helped solve problems, supported the founder & grown with the organisation has earned respect. But loyalty alone does not mean someone is still right for the role they are in. Businesses change. Roles become bigger. Complexity increases. The demands on leaders shift.
The Day I Threw Out My Playbook
A Michelin-rated chef slapped me across the face. Not with his hand. I had 50 EOS sessions under my belt at the time. Fifty. So I ran them clean. Guide open, every step in order; purity was the whole point. Follow it exactly, and the system works, and I never have to guess. That morning I was four minutes into teaching a tool. His leadership team sat around the table. He runs his kitchen with an iron fist, and he was running that room the same way. He stopped me mid-sentence and gave me the look. “Put down the guide. You know your stuff. Trust yourself. Meet my team where they are.” My hand went to my face like I had been hit. Nobody at that table moved. That guide was my pacifier. Fifty sessions in, every ounce of my attention was on the page and none of it on
Accountability Is Not Micromanagement: It’s how healthy teams move faster
Accountability often gets confused with micromanagement, but they are not the same. Micromanagement is about controlling how someone works. Accountability is about creating enough clarity that people can take ownership, make decisions and move forward without waiting for constant direction. I have seen this as both a business owner and an EOS Implementer. The healthiest teams are not the ones with the most oversight. They are the ones where people understand what they own, what success looks like and how their work supports the company’s larger goals. WHEN LEADERS BECOME BOTTLENECK Micromanagement usually starts with good intentions. A leader wants to protect the business, maintain quality or make sure nothing gets missed. But when every decision has to move through one person, that leader quickly becomes the bottleneck. Team members hesitate, initiative fades and capable people begin waiting for approval instead of using their judgment. Accountability creates the opposite effect.
Your Org Chart Isn’t the Problem. Your Seats Might Be.
Every leadership team I work with eventually builds an Accountability Chart. Boxes, names, clear lines of who owns what. It feels like progress, and it is. But here’s what gets missed: building the chart isn’t the finish line. The real work is going back to it and asking an uncomfortable question. Is the right person actually in this seat? Not “is this person good.” Not “is this person loyal.” Just, are they right for this seat, specifically. Signals to Watch For You don’t need a formal review to know when a seat isn’t working. The signs usually show up long before anyone says it out loud. One seat’s responsibilities keep sliding onto whoever is willing, not whoever owns it Someone is clearly capable but you can tell their heart isn’t in the role anymore A person “gets it” and “wants it,” but the workload has outgrown their capacity The
You Only Get 100 Pennies
You only get 100 pennies. Imagine walking into an EOS meeting with 100 pennies representing the collective thinking capacity of the room. Every new problem costs pennies. Understanding the issue costs pennies. Figuring out what we’re trying to accomplish costs pennies. Exploring options costs pennies. Making the decision costs pennies. Eventually, we run out. If humans came with an AI-style warning, it might say: “You’ve used all your thinking tokens. Your tokens will renew tomorrow at 7:00 a.m., after a full night’s sleep.” We all have a limited number of high-quality thinking tokens. The question is where we spend them. That’s leverage. A leadership meeting should be where we do our highest-value thinking, not where we use expensive human thinking tokens figuring something out from scratch. And now we have an incredible advantage. AI is your low-cost thinking partner, with access to the accumulated knowledge of civilization. Use it before