I was on a phone call earlier this week with a client who has 40 employees. He told me about the sudden resignation of one his long-time managers. Here’s the story he shared with me. “Last week at our quarterly management meeting, one of my key operations managers turned in his resignation. As we discussed the issue, he said all the extra pressure was too much for him to handle. I was thinking to myself, we haven’t even given him any more work to do. All we did was clarify expectations and improve our communication…   “We always thought we were pretty good at holding our people accountable. Now, I realize there was too much grey area for some people on our team. But with everyone using the EOS Tools, there’s no more grey area. Expectations are clearer than ever. He just couldn’t meet our expectations. “Anytime we lose a team

Want to resolve problems fast? Then hold consistent weekly meetings. Regular weekly meetings with your leadership team—and with all departments—exposes problems and opportunities and gives you the chance to solve them quickly. (In EOS, these problems and opportunities are called issues.)   Establishing the Pulse of Your Weekly Meetings The key is being consistent and faithful. That means every week, you: 1) Use the same meeting agenda 2) Meet at the same place 3) Meet at the same day and time 4) Start on time 5) End on time Before implementing this “meeting pulse,” issues can linger for weeks, months, sometimes even years without your leadership team even knowing about them. Now, because you’re having weekly meetings throughout the entire company, issues—the truth—is exposed throughout the company within 7 days. There isn’t a week that goes by without issues being exposed. Top 3 Transformations from Weekly Meetings Here are the

When we first met, one of my clients was struggling with significant turnover. They had been operating with the mentality of hiring fast and firing fast. Whenever they had an opening, they hired as fast as they could to fill the void. After all, they had customer orders to fulfill and they needed people in place to do it. The problem was that not everyone was the right person for their company—they really didn’t share the company core values or fit into the culture.   Use Core Values to Build Your Company Early on, I took them through a discovery process to discover their core values. We identified five core values that captured the uniqueness of what it felt like to be part of the team. With the core values in front of us, we used the People Analyzer to determine whether everyone else in the organization shared the same set of core

There are many different ways to grow your business. But some are better than others. In a recent annual session, one of my clients arrived with lists of ideas for growing their business over the coming year. The ideas spanned a wide range of products and services—most of which they weren’t currently providing.   To evaluate whether these ideas had any merit, we went back to validate their Core Focus to make sure their company sweet spot was clear. Hit Your Company’s Sweet Spot Think of the Core Focus as the sweet spot of your company. It’s made up of two parts: Your purpose/cause/passion for the business. This is the reason “Why” your company exists. Your niche. This is the one thing your company is truly great at. The combination of these two parts becomes a filtering and guiding mechanism to help you stay away from doing all the terrific things that

Imagine you’re on a road trip. Your kids have been whining and yelling in the backseat forabout an hour. Out of desperation you put a DVD into your laptop, letting out a sigh of relief as you wait for the kids’ movie to load. Only this time nothing happens. No Sound. Blank Screen. The whining instantly resumes. Your laptop’s operating system has crashed. Without a working operating system, the DVD just spins in the drive. No picture. No sound. The DVD drive can’t communicate with the screen or speakers. The operating system is the mechanism that enables everything to communicate and work together seamlessly. All of the programs running on your computer speak a common language (think Mac vs. PC or Windows XP vs. Windows 7) and are designed to either work together or stay out of each other’s way. Like a computer, a business needs an operating system to

In May 2013, Mark Dantonio, head coach of the Michigan State Spartan football team visited the Rose Bowl in California. His daughter took a video of her father predicting the Spartan’s Rose Bowl victory this season. You can find the video here. Mark did lead the team to a Rose Bowl victory on January 1st, 2014. He began with the end in mind, predicting the future, making his vision more tangible, more real, and within reach. More importantly, he was effective at making his vision clear to his team.   The rare combination of making a vision tangible with disciplined execution is a highly desired trait among many entrepreneurs today. It’s not the lack of vision that frustrates most; rather it’s the struggle to gain traction towards that vision. In sessions with clients, I have observed many leadership teams struggle to make their vision a reality for one of two