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].