The journey I lead with my clients is to help them become at least 80% strong across the six key components of their business: Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process and Traction. Recently, a client proudly proclaimed themselves to be 80% strong in their People component because they had run the People Analyzer (the tool that assesses whether employees are the “Right People” for the organization, and if they are in the “Right Seat”) and found that over 80% of their people are Right People/Right Seat (RP/RS). I had to deliver some disappointing news. Your strength in the People component is NOT in direct relation to the percentage of people who fit your culture (Right People) and who “Get it”, “Want it” and have the “Capacity to do it” (GWC) their role in the company (Right Seat). That is because of the Ripple Effect. That is, even one person who isn’t

Where are the Big Issues? In the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), the second day of the two-day Annual Planning Meeting includes several hours just for solving issues. On the second day of a recent Annual Planning Meeting, the Visionary interrupted the proceedings. He said, somewhat exasperated, “guys, we have only an hour left. Why aren’t we focused on our big, burning, urgent problems?” We all looked at our Issues List. I said to him “we’ve been selecting and prioritizing our issues all afternoon. What big, burning problems do you see up here that we aren’t talking about?” After some examination of the Issues List, he said “they aren’t up there”. So I asked the entire Leadership Team “what big, burning, urgent problems are out there that we haven’t put on our Issues List?” The question was met with a long silence. Finally, one member of the Leadership Team said “I

“One of them has to go”, the Integrator said. The other members of the Leadership Team nodded their heads in grim agreement. “Maybe both”, said the Ops Leader, “We may have two ‘Wrong People’.” Jen, Production Manager, and Dave, HR Specialist, seemed to hate each other. Every time they worked together it was a fight. The EOS Implementer asked what they fight about. “It happens every time we hire someone”, said the Ops Leader, “they argue about everything….who gets the resume first. Who makes the screening call. Who makes the offer. Every time it’s an ugly battle.” “What does the process say?”, the EOS Implementer asked. After a long silence, the Finance Leader sheepishly answered, “What process?” Two weeks later, the Ops Leader sat together with Jen and Dave. They expected the worst. What they got instead was a new Hiring Process. “Well that clears up a lot”, said Dave,

I recently opened a talk to a group of executives by posing a scenario. I asked them to imagine they were given $100,000 to invest, but they had to invest all of it into one of two companies. The two companies are competitors, working in the same industry and the same market. They are similar in size and have similar products.  The only difference between the two is one of the companies is outstanding in conceiving new ideas but average in execution, while the other is average in conceiving new ideas but outstanding in execution. I asked my audience, “where will you put your money?” The answer was unanimous: everyone wanted to put their money into the company with brilliant execution. Think about the word “executive”. It literally means “designed to execute”. So I find it pretty ironic that relatively few executives have ever had the experience of working in

In a previous post, I talked about two things that are Table Stakes for someone to be part of a company’s Leadership Team. Today I’m going to talk about one things that defines a GREAT Leadership Team. EOS is all about driving accountability throughout the organization. As goes the Leadership Team so goes the rest of the organization, so if the Leadership Team doesn’t hold each other accountable it becomes extremely difficult to drive accountability to the rest of the company. The idea of holding others accountable makes a lot of people uncomfortable because it implies difficult conversations. Americans tend to be conflict averse, it is part of our culture. So difficult conversations make us uncomfortable and we tend to avoid them. Yet I work with many high accountability Leadership Teams who are very direct with each other and it really ISN’T uncomfortable….it’s just what they do. But in many

I write a lot in these blogs about things the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) does well. Just to change things up, let me talk a little about an area where EOS does NOT fit, and that is early stage start-ups. A few times in my career as an EOS implementer, I have had the opportunity to discuss EOS with a very early stage start-up. I had to tell them they aren’t ready for the structure and discipline that EOS provides. That’s because the company is still in what I call “Blob Mode”. That term isn’t a dig at start-ups. Blob Mode is a necessary stage in many start-up companies. It is the stage where everybody does a little bit of everything. One day the CEO is doing sales. The next she is on-boarding a new customer. The next she is writing web content. And that variance of duties doesn’t just