What The Heck Is EOS? | Book Review

 “When you are 100% strong, everyone will be rowing
in the same direction and aligned around
the same short-term and long-term goals..." (p. 144)

Gino Wickman and Tom Bouwer's popular work is a terrific how-to-guide for building a company, akin to Jill Dyché's The New IT. Their Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) may be distilled into five tools detailed in chapters 3-7, respectively.

The authors describe a company's operating system as:

The way a company organizes all of its human energy. (p. 1)

Imagine an ant farm, observed over a period of time. Now imagine observing an organization. A team of average people running their company on one operating system will outperform a team of high achievers, each doing it their own way, every day of the week (p. 3). EOS is specifically designed for a 10 to 250 person entrepreneurial company that is open-minded and growth-oriented (p. 5), and is comprised of 6 key components (p. 10):

This review compares tools used in each of the EOS components to Academy Leadership workshops and comments where additional leadership focus may further strengthen a company.

Alignment & Accountability

One of the primary strength of EOS is a continuous focus on alignment, similar to an Academy Leadership Focus & Alignment workshop. Recall in (Collins & Lazier) B.E. (Beyond Entrepreneurship) 2.0, VISION is comprised of Core Values & Beliefs leading to Purpose which leads to Mission.

EOS has a similar focus on vision, and the operating tool used is called the Vision/Traction Organizer, or V/TO (p. 15), comprised of 8 questions:

1. What are your Core Values?
2. What is your Core Focus?
3. What is your 10-year Target?
4. What is your Marketing Strategy?
5. What is your 3-Year Picture?
6. What is your 1-Year Plan?
7. What are your Rocks?
8. What are your Issues? 

The latter two questions remind us of the After Action Review (AAR), in particular, Issues. EOS defines issues as a few things that need to be improved, fixed, or changed to make your company better (p. 21). This requires capable leaders though, who make the environment safe enough for open discussion. Communications should flow freely across all lines and departments, creating an open and honest culture (pp. 75-76). Stan McChrystal describes the same challenge in Team of Teams, learning that every person on each team needs to know at least one member of every other team.

With all of this terrific work done, individuals employing EOS likely would benefit from codifying a V/TO within a broader Personal Leadership Philosophy (PLP), extending beyond day-to-day operating principles.

Goals

In Aligning & Accomplishing Goals workshop self-evaluations, attendees usually score high (3 or 4) when answering whether or not goals are set. However, toward the end of a typical self-evaluation scores drop (to 1 or 2) for questions about tracking or communicating goals.

The EOS embraces an elegant solution: The Scorecard. A Scorecard contains a handful of numbers that tell you how your company or department is doing (p. 117). A Scorecard must have 4 key columns: Who, Measurables, Goal, and date (p. 119). From an accountability standpoint, Who may be the most valuable, identifying a Specific Person of Accountability, or SPA. Good leaders assign SPAs, and use SMART (Specific, Measurable, Agreed-Upon, Realistic & Trackable) Goals.

Priorities

During our Setting Leadership Priorities workshops, we identify our High Payoff activities, or HPAs. HPAs answer the following questions:

• What are you being paid to do?
• What do you do that produces the greatest results?
• What do you do that makes your company profitable?
• Why did the company hire you?
• What do you do that produces 80% of your results? 

In the EOS, the concept of Rocks is introduced, the 3-7 most important things that your company must get done in the next 90 days (p. 79). Further, each individual employee should have 1-3 Rocks every 90 days. A noteworthy part of EOS is that Rocks may include developmental objectives. For instance, you might have a Rock to take a class, read a book on time management, or help complete a big company project (p. 84).

Creating individual, developmentally based Rocks may the most significant way to strengthen EOS into a joint operational/leadership development system. Recall Lieberman's findings (HBR, Dec 2013) that when we focus on people and results, we're viewed as great leaders over 500% more often.

Meetings

In our Leading Productive Meetings workshops, we explore seven characteristics of effective meetings:

• Meeting Preparation
• Develop a Focused Agenda
• Guidelines During the Meeting
• Chair the Meeting
• Take Good Notes
• Evaluate the Process
• After the Meeting 

Some organizations, especially in the military have a daily or weekly "stand-up" meeting cadence. EOS summarizes these characteristics by clarifying It's what you do in meetings that's a waste of time (p. 92), and recommend a Weekly Meeting Pulse with the following specific agenda (p. 95):

• Make sure everything is kept on track.
• Keep the circles connected (stay connected and on the same page with your team).
• Hold each other accountable.
• Solve issues. 

EOS includes a personal component in the weekly pulse. Every Level 10 (weekly) meeting begins with a segue, where each person on the team shares one piece of both personal and professional good news from the past week (p. 99). A recommended variant could invite individuals to recognize valuable contributions others have made in the past week, strengthening appreciation for each other.

People Analyzer

Virtually all Academy Leadership programs begin with the multidimensional Energize2Lead Workshop. In the EOS, The People Analyzer is a simple tool that pulls together Core Values and the Accountability Chart together and helps your organization identify if they have the Right People in The Right Seats (p. 131). This is an exceptional leadership tool. The EOS People Analyzer assesses individual Core Values Alignment for the following (p. 131):

• Be Humbly Confident
• Grow or Die
• Help First
• Do the Right Thing
• Do What You Say 

Additionally, the People Analyzer assesses the Right Seat fit by addressing (p. 135):

• Get It?
• Want It?
• Capacity to Do It? 

In our Creating a Motivational Environment workshops, we learn to ask: Is this an ability issue or a motivational issue when first encountering performance issues. Right Seat essentially does the same.

Summary

EOS takes best practices from numerous excellent sources, creating an attractive business operating system.

With additional focus on leadership development
and a strong coaching culture, EOS may possibly extend
well to companies beyond 10-250 people.