I recently facilitated a Focus Day with a new client. There were four people in the room, three of whom were owners. As we worked through their Accountability Chart, something stood out. The owners weren’t focused on protecting titles or preserving the current structure. Several times they talked about the need to challenge “sacred cows” and avoid falling into the trap of “it’s always been done that way.” Instead, they kept coming back to a simple question: What’s best for the company? It struck me because that mindset is rarer than you might think. In many entrepreneurial businesses, ownership and leadership become intertwined. The assumption is that if someone owns part of the company, they should automatically have a seat on the leadership team. But ownership and leadership are not the same thing. One of the most important reminders I give leadership teams when building an Accountability Chart is this:

I was sitting in a quarterly session with a construction company a while back. The leadership team was sharp, engaged, and genuinely working through the EOS model. Their Scorecard was solid. Their Rocks were on track. By any measure, they were executing. And yet, somewhere out on the job sites, the crews were frustrated. The same problems kept showing up: scheduling gaps, wrong information, breakdowns between the field and the office. The leadership team was aware of these things. They had Issues on the list. They were IDSing. They were moving,  So why did it feel, to the people doing the work, like nothing ever changed? I didn’t have a quick fix for them. What I did have was a clearer picture of the problem, and it’s one I see in a lot of companies running EOS. The Gap Between Solving and Empowering Here’s what I’ve come to understand: the

Some leadership teams can spend 30 minutes debating a decision that was effectively made in the first five. Not because they’re indecisive, but because the team members have different definitions of “enough information.” I’ve noticed this pattern repeatedly when leadership teams are solving issues: – One person is ready to decide. – Another wants one more example. – Another asks about an exception. – Someone else remembers something that happened three years ago and then the stories start… Everyone has good intentions, but the discussion continually drifts into the weeds. Some people naturally want more information before they’re comfortable making a decision. They aren’t being difficult. They genuinely feel uncomfortable making a decision until they believe they understand the situation completely. The challenge is that the discussion has diminishing returns: – The first few minutes usually uncover information that informs the decision. – The next twenty often just increase everyone’s

Right now, we have two roosters. We only need one, but I can’t seem to let either of them go. Sven has been a sweet rooster, with no aggression toward me, and he seems to take good care of the hens. Baby Roo is a nearly 1-year-old, equally sweet rooster who has all the urges you would expect from a youngster. This situation results in frequent “arguments” between the two roosters. For the most part, the hens don’t seem to be too terribly interested in getting involved. They might scatter when a skirmish starts, but then they quickly return to what they were doing. I can’t help but wonder if there would be less chicken drama if the “ladies” told the two gentlemen to “just get along.” These chicken skirmishes come to mind when I see some of my leadership teams engage in conflict. Or rather, not engage. Sometimes, the

A while back, I came across a Reddit post that got my attention. And then recently it showed up again in a facilitation class I was taking.   It was a simple graphic showing the “4 Stages of Learning” (more formally known as the Four Stages of Competence)—a model originally developed by Noel Burch that maps the emotional and psychological journey we go through when learning something new. You’ve probably seen it before in some form. But something about the way it was visualized made it click for me in a different way. Almost immediately, I started thinking about how closely it mirrors what I see teams experience as they implement EOS. Because while EOS is a set of tools and disciplines, it’s also a learning process. And like any meaningful change, it comes with very real emotions along the way. Here’s how I see those stages show up in an