A Great Operating System To Run Your Business

Do you have a simple operating system to run your small or midsize business?  You should and you can get some very practical advice about an EOS – Entrepreneurial Operating System from the book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman.  

If you are anything like other entrepreneurs and business owners, you probably worry about 100 different things in your business.  In Wickman’s book, he shares 6 things that will help you create an EOS so you can stop worrying about all the little details.  These things are probably most applicable for companies with between 3 and 100 employees but if you’re larger or smaller, there are still things you can learn and apply.  This operating system is common in the USA but is less well known in the Middle East. 

Daoud Kakish has applied these to his own business and he shares those details in the podcast.  Here’s an overview of the 6 components of Wickman’s EOS and how Daoud applied them to his business. 

The 6 Components of The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)

1 Vision

Do you have a clear vision for your business and are you communicating it?  You want all your staff rowing in the same direction.  Are they?  With a clear vision that is well communicated, you will.

2 People

Surround yourself with great people because they will have a huge impact on your success. Successful businesses have the right people in the right seats. 

3 Data

What are the metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) for your business?  What is your business scorecard?  Ideally, you’re focusing on no more than 10 KPIs that you monitor weekly. 

4 Issues

What are the obstacles that get in the way of achieving your vision?  Good businesses identify and solve any issues quickly in an honest and open environment. 

5 Process

What is the way you do business and how are things done?  Documenting this process ensures the processes are followed by your entire team.   

6 Traction

How do you take your vision and put it into action? This involves tying everything together to create traction in your business.

 

How We Implemented Our EOS

There’s a great chapter at the end of this book called “Getting Started” and that’s where we found our biggest take-aways to apply.  Here are the 7 steps we followed from that chapter.     

Accountability Chart

You may call this an org chart but what is important is that it defines all the roles or departments necessary to run a business.  In smaller businesses the same person might fill more than one role or may have outside support filling some roles.  This helps define who owns different roles and departments so you know who is accountable for them. 

The book also encourages you to define your core values as a business.  These might be 3 to 5 things that are a big part of who you are as a business.  We rated each employee based on the core values using a Green – Orange – Red system.  What we found is that we had no team members rated Red, but we did have a few that were Orange.  So, we knew we had to either get them to Green or re-evaluate their fit with our company.  We also use this rating system each time we interview new potential team members.

Rocks  

We set up 3 “Rocks” per quarter for each of our departments.  These are our priorities.  When everything is important, nothing is important so we have no more than 3 rocks per quarter for each of finance, sales and marketing, and operations.  We are really clear about who owns that rock even if they aren’t actually doing that work themselves.  There is 1 name per rock so accountability is clear. 

Meeting Pulse

We have a clear schedule to our meeting pulse or meeting cadence at our business.  Our structure includes:

·        Weekly leadership meeting:

o   Start with a positive focus, client highlights, or a good news updates so we begin from a good place

o   Review progress towards the quarterly rocks

o   Review key metrics we’re monitoring

o   IDS – Identify, Discuss, Solve any issues that have emerged and clearly define action items into a To-Do list

·        Quarterly leadership meetings

o   Define the key rocks for the upcoming quarter

o   Celebrate achievements from the previous quarter

·        Annual leadership meeting

o   Identify the top rocks for the upcoming year

o   Full day meeting

·        Daily huddle

o   Quick 15-minute standup meeting for entire team or by department

o   Team members identify what they’re working on and what they need help with

Scorecard or Key Metrics

We look at these each week with our leadership team and try to focus on no more than 2-3 per department.  In sales and marketing for example we focus on how many discovery calls we have and deals we closed.  The operations department focuses closely on our “Smileback” data which is direct feedback on our performance from our customers.  Our scorecard for the finance department is focused on revenue and net operating income.

V/TO – Vision/ Traction Organizer

The book has a template for this that summarizes our core values, core focus, 10-year target, marketing strategy, 3-year picture, and 1-year plan.  We have this in one page and we use it to maintain our focus for the business.  It gets updated once per year. 

Three-Step Process Documenter

We document all the processes in our business – from marketing to sales to service delivery.  It clarifies the systems within your business.  We had a process already for things but we needed to write it down so if, for example, you hire a new employee, they can clearly understand your process and be part of it.

Everyone has a Number

Everyone in your business has a goal.  Those goals don’t have to be big and lofty, but they should have something specific that they own. 

Daoud’s Bonus: Clarity Notes

Once a week, I take 20 minutes or so at a coffee shop or some location that is not my home or office, and I just write things down related to my business so I can get it out of my head.  Anything that is on my mind, I just type it into a document I call “Weekly Clarity Notes”.  It might include simple notes about things on my mind, what’s working well and what isn’t, things I might do differently, new ideas.  I use this time to identify the big 3 things I want to focus on the following week. 

If you’ve already read Traction, connect with us on Twitter and share your story.  If you haven’t read Traction, put it on your must read list today.