Why Meetings Are Like Grow Monsters – and What to Do About It
As a young boy in the 1970s, I was excited to receive my first set of “Grow Monsters.” Cheap toys made from a super-absorbent polymer, these small, shapeless specks would expand by up to 500% of their original size when placed in water. Fullgrown, they were supposed to resemble dinosaurs and other fearsome creatures, with the process designed to delight and amaze naïve young lads like me.
Why You Need to Solve Business Issues Slowly
One night this holiday season, my wife and I were wrapping gifts for our family. When a large pile of brightly colored packages sat beside each of us, we stood back to admire our handiwork. Kate’s packages were beautiful – crisply wrapped, carefully secured with beautiful ribbons that matched the wrapping paper, each package festooned with tidy little bows. My packages were technically covered (mostly) with wrapping paper and tape. But they didn’t really look…finished.
What Is an EOS Implementer?
In my conversations with business owners and business coaches alike, I often get asked, “What is an EOS® Implementer?”
People tend to lump coaches, consultants and EOS Implementers into one big category of professionals who help businesses, business leaders, and leadership teams. However, there are some important differences.
Whether you’re a visionary business leader looking for the right kind of help, or someone wanting to help companies and leaders gain greater traction, here’s a look at who EOS Implementers are and what makes them tick.
Stop Trying to Get Buy-in from Your Employees
I’ve worked with dozens of entrepreneurs who started their EOS journey wanting, among other things, more “buy-in” from their employees. While I understand how rare and precious it is to have team members who share and want to achieve your company’s vision, the term “buy-in” itself has always troubled me.
After all, if you have to “buy” someone’s allegiance, does she really share your vision? Can you really count on her to help you achieve that vision? How about when the going gets tough? And, how much are you having to pay, anyway?
What If You’re Promoting the Wrong People?
“The Peter Principle” is a term coined by Laurence J. Peter in 1969 to describe the recurring phenomenon of employees being promoted to – and often beyond – their highest level of competence. While hilariously illustrated in the comic strip Dilbert, both versions of the television show The Office, and the movie Office Space – the consequences for a small, entrepreneurial company aren’t funny at all.
Four Ways the “Blame Game” Can Kill Your Business
When we begin implementing EOS with a company, we always ask the leaders to commit fully to the journey ahead – the journey to become their very best as a leadership team. One of the specific things that requires is to take responsibility for everything that you and your fellow leaders have created in your organization. Like a lot of things in EOS, that sounds easy – but it’s hard and very rare.
What we’re talking about is avoiding the blame game, which is so common in lean, fast-moving organizations. Most readers of this blog know the feeling well – you’re sailing along, growing and prospering, and then all of a sudden you hit the ceiling. You’re stuck or derailed by a major problem, or by hundreds of little ones. It’s frustrating and scary – and when you’re frustrated and scared your emotions can get the better of you.
4 Reasons Your Company Vision Isn’t “Shared By All”
Before a leadership team begins its EOS journey, we ask each member of the team to rate the company from 1-10 (with 10 being best) in answer to three questions. The second question is, “How aligned is your organization around the company’s vision and plan?”
The average answer to that question is 4, and it’s not at all unusual for the owner/Visionary to offer a score several points higher than anyone else on the team.
Seven Tips for Improving Strategic Execution
If the time you spend on vision and planning doesn’t help you gain traction – here are seven tips that may help.
Rocks For All – Simplified
A few months ago I published a blog post entitled Too Small To Make a Difference? The point of the article is that everyone in a business matters—from the owner to the newest “front line” hire. I further suggested that entrepreneurs work hard to engage everyone in the EOS process, including the use of Rocks, Level 10 Meetings, and Scorecards throughout the organization.
When my clients are struggling with that concept, I’ve found that a painstaking approach to clearly and simply defining these tools really helps. Because try as we might, entrepreneurial leaders and managers often over-complicate things.
You Don’t Have to Fix It
One of the first things a company implementing EOS does is clearly define what it expects from its employees. They discover three to seven Core Values that define the organization’s culture, and they clearly define everyone’s roles and responsibilities. Those that consistently exhibit the Core Values and excel in their clearly defined roles are “Right People in the Right Seat.”