Franchise Update Magazine Issue IV, 2014 | Page 24
Grow Market Lead
Human
resources
BY BILL WAGNER
There Is a Silver Bullet!
I
It’s time to meet Gino Wickman’s EOS
’ve been an entrepreneur for most
of 40 years, with the exception of
a 3-year sentence with both Xerox
and PepsiCo. What those 6 years
taught me is that I am not designed to
work in large corporations. During my
entrepreneurial experience, I’ve built
and sold three businesses. During that
time, I’ve “hit the ceiling” a number of
times. These past 15 years have found
me teaching, coaching, and mentoring
a number of entrepreneurs.
In my first book, The Entrepreneur
Next Door, I surveyed the personalities
of 1,509 successful entrepreneurs. They
shared a number of very similar personality traits. They also shared the following:
they were consistent and avid students,
voracious readers, invested in their own
development, and constantly looking
to improve themselves. They were also
looking for the proverbial silver bullet.
Since 2001, I’ve been a part of a CEO
peer-to-peer group. Three years ago, one
of our members hired a professional implementer to assist him in implementing
Gino Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). During this time,
he grew his revenues from $24 million
to $45 million; reduced his employee
turnover from 18 percent to 7 percent;
and increased his margins by 4 percent.
He now has a strong vision, the ability
to execute on that vision, and an organization that is amazingly healthy. More
than 5,000 companies have successfully
implemented EOS, including a number
of hyper-growth franchisors.
Imagine if you would, the following
books… Good to Great by Jim Collins,
which is all about creating and maintaining vision. Ram Charan and Larry
Bossidy wrote Execution, Verne Harnish
wrote Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, and
22
Franchiseupdate ISS U E IV, 2 0 1 4
Gino Wickman wrote Traction, which all
are about establishing traction in your
organization and executing on your vision. Last is The Advantage by Patrick
Lencioni, which is about organizational
health and having a healthy company.
EOS is all about having vision, traction,
and healthy. To have vision without traction is nothing more than hallucination.
EOS has six elements: vision, people,
data, issues, process, and traction. Each
provides a specific process that drives results. Almost every business book deals
with one of these six components. EOS
however, ties all six into one connected
process. I refer to it as a process of elegant simplicity. Simplicity helps entrepreneurs create a well-defined, one-page
strategic plan. It provides focus.
Weekly meetings “rock”
Do you know what the most productive
day of the year is? The day before vacation. On that day we clear our desk, we
delegate, we get everything done. Why?
We don’t have a choice. Here is how
we use this as part of the EOS weekly
meeting, which is part of the sixth element, traction.
EOS requires a meeting at the same
time every week. In these meetings, each
executive team member reports on both
their weekly to-do list and their shortterm, 90-day goals. (EOS refers to these
90-day goals as “Rocks.”) The catch is
that those in the meeting can report on
their progress only by saying they are
done or not done, on track or not, finished or not. If they haven’t completed
the responsibilities they committed to
for that week, then they say “Not done,”
and their responsibilities will become an
issue in that day’s meeting. This is the
motivation that keeps every team mem-
ber on track. It’s pure unadulterated peer
pressure: nobody wants to show up and
say “Off track.”
The second element of a weekly
meeting is the way EOS processes issues: identify, discuss, and solve. If two
people are responsible, then no one is
responsible. One person means single
accountability. I’ve worked with teams
time and again that discuss but never
solve their issues. It is easy to identify
issues. The question is what to do about
them. Do we continuously discuss or do
we solve them? This is a process on how
to identify, discuss, and solve issues—and
it happens very fast.
This past year I saw the light. My
firm has been helping companies tactically with their franchisee and employee
selection and strategically with their employee development, but I was unable to
assist them with a more complete, simple
system. That was my motivation to become a professional EOS implementer.
I hope I’ve enticed you to at least
think about the value of my experience.
I strongly recommend that you buy
Traction. The book provides a step-bystep guide on how to implement EOS
yourself. In the past 5 years, more than
5,000 companies have implemented
EOS, and more than 1,000 have used a
professional implementer to assist them.
There are a couple of ways to get
started. First, if you can, set aside 90
minutes for an executive team meeting
where I am prepared to take you and
your team through a step-by-step process. Afterward, you will know if EOS
is for you.
My second suggestion is to purchase
the book. I am prepared to send a copy
of Traction to the first 50 CEOs who give
me a call. I can promise you, there is a
silver bullet that will drive all aspects of
your company, and it’s called EOS. n
Bill Wagner is CEO of Accord Management Systems and an EOS Implementer.
For the past 15 years he has assisted the
franchise community with the people side of
their business. If you would like to complete
a company checklist to see where you stand,
send an email with “Traction” in the subject
line to [email protected].