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The founder of a company that grew to over a billion dollars in annual revenue, once said: "If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time." Like anything worth achieving in life, this is so much easier said than done - especially because teams are made up of human beings, and human beings are the most complicated and dysfunctional organisms on the planet. While all teams are different, their isues tend to be the same, encountering them over and over again. In his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, author Patrick Lencioni takes a deeper look at the what these common dysfunctions are and how they impact teams. Lencioni explores the root causes of all the problems you can face as a leader when trying to get your team to "row in the same direction." So let's uncover each of the five dsyfuctions and in turn, explore what you can do as a leader to address them so that you can achieve your greatest goals. Dysfunction #1: Absence of Trust This first dysfunction is all about the absence of trust among your team members. As Lencioni points out, trust is one of those words that gets used so often that it has lost some of its meaning. He says that he intends it to mean: "The confidence among team members that their peers' intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group." Based on this definition, the root cause of this first dysfunction is most people's unwillingness to be vulnerable with the group. The natural tendency of most people is to hide their mistakes and weaknesses from their peers and bosses. Teams with an absence of trust (a) hide weaknesses from one another, (b) don't ask for help or provide constructive feedback, (c) don't offer help outside their own areas of responsibility, (d) jump to conclusions about the intentions and skills of others quickly, (e) don't recognize and tap into each others' skills and experiences, (f) waste time and energy trying to look good, (g) hold grudges, and (h) dread meetings and find reasons to avoid spending time together. Teams that exhibit trust (a) admit weaknesses and mistakes, (b) ask for help, (c) accept questions and input about their roles, (d) give each other the benefit of the doubt, (e) offer feedback and assistance to others, (f) tap into each others' skills and experiences, (g) focus time and energy on important issues, not politics, (h) offer and accept apologies without hesitation, and (i) look forward to meetings and other opportunities to work as a group. Overcoming a lack of trust There are a few things you can do to get over a lack of trust on your team. One of the most powerful exercises you can do is a "personal history" for each person on your team, where each team member shares information about themselves. When people find areas to connect with their team members on (i.e. connections in common or shared interests), they are much more likely to trust one another. You should also consider having your team take one of the many personality and behavioural preference profile surveys. Understanding exactly how people are different on a team can help create empathy for each other, and help them work more effectively with one another. Finally, as a leader, your most important action is to demonstrate vulnerability yourself. How this relates to Dysfunction #2 - The Fear of Conflict By building trust with one another, constructive conflict becomes possible. Teams know they can argue and debate with one another without fear of being branded destructive or critical. Dysfunction #2: Fear of Conflict Most people dislike conflict and avoid it at all costs. Unfortunately, it's also one of the biggest drivers of dysfunction impacting teams. Before we hop into the idea of promoting conflict, it's important we make the distinction between ideological conflict (the good kind) and destructive fighting and internal politics (the bad kind). What we are looking for here is more of the good kind and less of the bad kind. Teams that fear conflict (a) have boring meetings, (b) create environments where internal politics and personal attacks occur, (c) ignore controversial topics that are critical to team success, (d) don't tap into all the opinions and perspectives of team members, and (e) waste time and energy with posturing to one another. Teams that engage in conflict (a) have great meetings, (b) pull out the ideas of all team members, (c) solve real problems quickly, (d) minimize politics, and (e) address critical topics on a regular basis. Overcoming a fear of conflict The first and easiest step is to acknowledge publicly that conflict is productive. The second step is to mine for any unresolved disagreements among team members and get them resolved. Consider assigning somebody this role. Coach your team members so that they each have permission to nurture healthy debate amongst one another. If you find them shying away from a tough conversation, coach them towards understanding that what they are doing is important and necessary to the team's success. Finally, on the flip side, as a leader you should practice restraint when it comes to resolving conflict. Our natural tendency is to eliminate conflict because it is uncomfortable. Resist the urge to step in when constructive conflict is happening. How this relates to Dysfunction #3: Lack of Commitment When team members feel free to engage in productive conflict, they can commit and buy-in to a decision that's made - even if they disagree with it - because they feel like they have been heard. Dysfunction #3: Lack of Commitment On a team, commitment is a function of two things: Clarity and Buy-in. If there is clarity around decisions and buy-in on what those decisions require from the team, great things can happen. A team that fails to commit (a) creates ambiguity around direction and priorities, (b) over analyzes and under-acts, (c) creates lack of confidence and fear of failure, (d) revisits old discussions and decisions again and again, and (e) encourages second-guessing among team members. A team that commits (a) creates clarity around direction and priorities, (b) aligns the entire team around common objectives, (c) develops an ability to learn from mistakes, (d) takes advantage of opportunities before competitors do, (e) moves forward without hesitation, and (f) changes direction without hesitation. Overcoming a lack of commitment One of the most valuable things you can do is end each meeting with a thorough review of the key decisions made during the meeting, and agree on what needs to be communicated to other team members about those decisions. This should take you at least 10 minutes to do correctly, and is critical to your success in getting things done. Another area of discipline that will help with overcoming a lack of commitment, is creating deadlines around decisions. If there are any unresolved decisions that need to be made, set a deadline around when you'll have a decision, and stick to it. You can also bring contingency plans into your discussions in order to make sure everybody understands the worst-case scenario if you've made the wrong decision. Sometimes teams won't commit because they haven't considered the consequences of things going wrong. If your team is truly commitment-phobic, start off by having them make decisions concerning low-risk situations. And, finally, as a leader you need to be comfortable in making decisions that ultimately turn out to be wrong. How this relates to Dysfunction #4: Avoidance of Accountability When decisions and commitments are made publicly, team members are much more likely to be able to hold one another accountable. Dysfunction #4: Avoidance of Accountability Lencioni suggests that the most effective and efficient means of maintaining high standards on a team is through peer pressure. That said however, most people avoid accountability like the plague. They don't like others holding them accountable for things they said they would do, and they feel just as uncomfortable in holding others accountable for things that don't get done. A team that avoids accountability (a) creates resentment among team members who have high standards, (b) encourages mediocrity, (c) misses deadlines and key deliverables, and (d) relies on the leader as the sole source of accountability. A team that holds each other accountable (a) ensures that poor performers feel pressure to improve, (b) identifies potential problems quickly, (c) establishes respect among team members who are held to the same high standards, and (d) avoids excessive bureaucracy around performance management and corrective action. Overcoming a lack of accountability The first and obvious thing you can do is publicly clarify what the team needs to achieve, and exactly what each team member is expected to contribute in order for that to happen. Then, simple and regular progress reviews will ensure that people continue to take action towards the goals you've set as a team. You may also want to consider shifting rewards away from individual performance to team achievement, so that people feel the need to not only ensure their performance is up to par, but that their team members are also living up to their end of the bargain. As a leader, your role will be to function as the ultimate arbiter of discipline if and when the team fails. If you've set up the culture correctly, these instances should be fewer and far between. How this relates to Dysfunction #5: Inattention to Results When team members are not being held accountable for their contributions, they are more likely to pay attention to their own needs and wants as opposed to the results the team should be achieving together. Dysfunction #5: Inattention to Results Lencioni deems Inattention to Results the ultimate dysfunction of a team. Here, the tendency is for team members to care about something other than the collective goals of the team. There are a number of reasons why team members might be focussed on something other than results. For some, just being a part of the team is enough to keep them satisfied. For others, focussing on their own career and status is more important than the results the team generates. Whatever the reason, having a team that has this 'illness' ensures everything else will fall apart. A team that is not focussed on results (a) fails to grow, (b) rarely defeats competitors, (c) loses high performing employees, (d) encourages team members to focus on their own careers and individual goals, and (e) is easily distracted. A team that focusses on results (a) retains achievement-oriented employees, (b) minimizes individualistic behaviour, (c) enjoys success and suffers failure acutely, (d) benefits from individuals who subjugate their own goals/interests for the good of the team, and (e) avoids distractions. Overcoming inattention to results There are a number of things you can do to overcome this dysfunction, but by far the most important thing to do is to publicly declare results. Teams that are willing to commit publicly to results will often do whatever it takes to get them done. A public scoreboard that is visible to everybody on your team will help drive this home. Once you've done this, consider tying compensation and rewards to the achievement of those public goals. As a leader, your role is to model attention to results. If the people on your team get the feeling you are focussing on anything other than results, they'll feel like they can do the same.
It’s Your Time, This is Your Story Know that wherever you are in your life right now is both temporary, and exactly where you are supposed to be. You have arrived at this moment to learn what you must learn, so you can become the person you need to be to create the life you truly want. You are in the process of writing your life story, and no good story is without challenges. You have the ability to change – or create – anything in your life, starting right now. And this summary will help you do that. There is nothing that says you have to settle for less than you truly want, just because everybody else does. Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod builds three imperative arguments: You are just as worthy, deserving, and capable of creating and sustaining extraordinary health, wealth, happiness, love and success in your life as any other person on earth. It is absolutely crucial—not only for the quality of your life, but for the impact you make on your family, friends, clients, co-workers, children and anyone whose life you touch—that you start living in alignment with that truth. In order for you to stop settling for less than you deserve – in any area of your life – and to create the levels of personal, professional, and financial success you desire, you must first dedicate time each day to becoming the person you need to be, one who is qualified and capable of consistently attracting, creating and sustaining the levels of success you want. How you wake up each day and your morning routine (or lack thereof) dramatically affects your levels of success in every single area of your life. Focused, productive, successful mornings generate focused, productive, successful days – which inevitably create a successful life- in the same way unfocused, unproductive, and mediocre mornings generate unfocused, unproductive and mediocre days, and ultimately a mediocre quality of life. By simply changing the way you wake up in the morning, you can transform any area of your life, faster than you ever thought possible. Our outer world will always be a reflection of our inner world. Our level of success is always going to parallel our level of personal development. Until we dedicate time each day to developing ourselves into the person we need to be to create the life we want, success is always going to be a struggle to attain. The 95% Reality Check Approximately 95% of our society settles for far less than they want in life, and never understand that they could be, do, and have all that they want. So, what can we do now to ensure that we end up in the 5%? Step 1: Acknowledge the 95% Reality Check It’s no secret that most people are living life far below their potential. Once we can acknowledge that, we can move on to the next steps. Step 2: Identify the Causes of Mediocrity To prevent mediocrity from happening to you, you must know what causes the average person to end up that way. One reason is because we carry our stress, fear and worry from yesterday with us into today. To move beyond your past and transcend your limitations, you must stop looking at your past and start imagining a life of limitless possibilities. Another reason is that people don’t know what their purpose is. Choose a life purpose, anything you want, and align with it. A third reason is isolating incidents. Realise that the real impact and consequences of each of our choices is monumental. Stop isolating incidents and start seeing the bigger picture. Everything we do affects who we become, which determines the life that we will ultimately create and live. Another common reason is lack of accountability. Find someone to hold you accountable to what you do. The next reason is a mediocre circle of influence. Research has shown that we virtually become like the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Who you spend your time with may be the single most determining factor in the person you become and your quality of life. If you are surrounded with lazy, weak-minded people, you will become like them. Spend time with positive, successful achievers and inevitably, their attitudes and successful habits will reflect on you. Another reason is lack of personal development. Our levels of success will rarely exceed our level of personal development, because success is something we attract by who we become. Your level of success will rarely exceed your level of personal development. The last reason is lack of urgency. It’s human nature to have a “someday” mindset. Now matters more than any other time in your life, because what you do today determines who you will become, and that will always determine the quality and direction of your life. Step 3: Draw Your Line In the Sand Make a decision as to what you are going to start doing differently from this day forward. Not tomorrow, not next week, or next month. Today. Your entire life changes the day that you decide you will no longer accept mediocrity for yourself. When you realise that today is the most important day of your life and when you decide that now matters more than any other time. Why Did YOU Wake Up This Morning? If you’re like most people, you probably hit the snooze button a few times each morning before reluctantly dragging yourself out of bed. Consider what you’re actually doing – resisting your life. Each time you hit the snooze button, and you think, “I don’t want to wake up,” you’re really saying, “I don’t want to live my life.” The tone of our morning has a powerful impact on the tone of the rest of our day. If you wake up each day with passion and purpose, you will spend your day being passionate and purposeful. For the most part, we need as much sleep as we believe we need. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you tell yourself you will feel tired in the morning, you will. If you don’t, you won’t. Experiment with this idea yourself, and then think about how many hours of sleep you really need. The Five-Step Snooze-Proof Wake Up Strategy Step 1: Set Your Intentions Before Bed Your first thought in the morning is usually the last thought you had before you went to bed. So each night, consciously decide to actively and mindfully create a positive expectation for the next morning. Step 2: Move Your Alarm Clock Across The Room Moving your alarm clock across the room will force you to get out of bed and engage your body in movement immediately in the morning. Step 3: Brush Your Teeth Go directly to the bathroom and brush your teeth. Step 4: Drink a Full Glass of Water After 6-8 hours without water, you will likely be dehydrated, which causes fatigue. Rehydrate your body and mind as quickly as possible. Step 5: Get Dressed or Jump In The Shower Make sure to take the first steps to starting your day. From here, it requires very little discipline to stay awake for the rest of your morning. The Life S.A.V.E.R.S. – Six Practices Guaranteed to Save You From a Life of Unfulfilled Potential Silence is the first practice, specifically purposeful silence, which means you are engaging with a beneficial purpose in mind. This can be found in meditation, prayer, reflection, deep breathing, gratitude or many other things. Affirmations are one of the most effective tools for quickly becoming the person you want to be. They allow you to design and then develop the mindset that you need to take any area of your life to the next level. Saying positive affirmations will immediately make an impression on your subconscious mind, which will transform the way you think and feel. Visualisation refers to the practice of generating positive results in the outer world by using your imagination to create mental pictures of specific behaviours and outcomes occurring in your life. Visualise what you truly want – your major goals and deepest desires. Next, visualise who you need to be and what you need to do. Exercise should be a staple in your daily rituals. Even if it’s only for a few minutes, exercise will boost your energy, enhance your health, improve your self-confidence and enable you to think better and concentrate longer. Reading is one of the most immediate methods for gaining knowledge, ideas and strategies that will help you in all areas of your life. Scribing is the last practice, and it means to write. Putting your thoughts down on paper will show you valuable insights that you wouldn’t otherwise see. Keeping a daily journal will help you gain clarity, capture ideas, review lessons, and acknowledge your progress. These practices may seem difficult at first, but stick with it. They will change your life. The 6-Minute Miracle Everyone is busy. But everyone can find six minutes a day to become the person we’ve always wanted to be. Spend your first minute sitting quietly in purposeful silence. Then, take one minute to think about your goals and priorities. Close your eyes, and take the next minute to visualise what it will look and feel like when you reach your goals. Open your eyes, and spend one minute writing down some of the things that you’re grateful for. Then, read one or two pages of a book that will teach you something new. Finally, stand up and move your body for one minute. On days where you are pressed for time, this six-minute routine will accelerate your personal development. Anyone can improve his or her life. You have no excuse not to. Customise Your Miracle Morning The Miracle Morning is completely customisable. There is no limit to how personalised you can make this routine to fit your lifestyle and help you achieve your most significant goals. Wake Up and Start Time You don’t actually have to do Miracle Morning in the morning. There are advantages to starting your day with it, but if you cannot do it in the morning, you will still get many of the benefits. When, Why, and What To Eat (In the Morning) It’s best to eat after your Miracle Morning. If you feel like you must eat before, make it something light. Aim for foods that will fuel your body, such as fruits or vegetables. Aligning The Miracle Morning With Your Goals and Dreams Make sure your affirmations and visualisations align with your goals and dreams, and that they clarify what you need to think, believe, and do to achieve them. Overcoming Procrastination: Do the Worst, First One of the most effective strategies for overcoming procrastination is to do the least enjoyable tasks first. The Miracle Morning On Weekends Doing the Miracle Morning will make you feel more productive and fulfilled, so it is suggested to continue on weekends. See how you feel on days you skip it, and go from there. Keep Your Miracle Morning Fresh, Fun, and Exciting It’s important to mix things up and keep variety in your Miracle Morning. You can switch the type of exercise you do, or the meditation app you use. Adjust based on your daily goal. The Real Secret to Forming Habits That Will Transform Your Life Our habits create our life. Therefore, there is nothing more important than mastering and controlling them. Habits are behaviours that are repeated regularly and tend to occur subconsciously. Whether you realize it or not, your habits control your life. So make the effort to control your habits. Based on work with hundreds of clients, it seems that you can change any habit in 30 days, if you have the right strategy. Lucky for you, you’re about to learn the best strategy. Days 1-10: Phase One – Unbearable The first 10 days of implementing any new habit can feel almost unbearable. It’s painful. Many people don’t understand that this feeling is temporary. They think this is how it will always feel, so they give up. However, if you’re prepared for the first 10 days – if you know they will be painful, but temporary – you can beat the odds and succeed. Push through the pain. Know that it will only get easier from here. Days 11-20: Phase Two – Uncomfortable The next 10–day phase is much easier, but still uncomfortable. It will require discipline and commitment to stick with it. Stay committed. You’ve already come so far. Days 21-30: Phase Three – Unstoppable The final ten days is where you positively reinforce and associate pleasure with your new habit. You’ve been associating pain and discomfort with it the first twenty days. These are the days that will make you feel proud and happy about your new habit, which is what will make you continue to do it in the future.
When you become an entrepreneur, there are many predictable frustrations you’ll run into: Not having enough profit Not enough personal income Not enough customers Can’t find good people Don’t have enough time The business depends too much on you And the list goes on. Finding your way out of those predictable problems is difficult, if not impossible, without a system that predictably produces the opposite of those issues. That’s where The E-Myth and the Entrepreneurial Model it promotes comes in. According to Michael Gerber, the solution involves thinking about your business like a franchise – which is a proprietary way of doing business that successfully differentiates every extraordinary business from their competitors. This is the classic “work on your business rather than in it” advice you’ll hear repeated by business gurus. The difference is that Gerber has created step-by-step instructions on how you should get there. Through this book and summary, you’ll find the answer to the following questions: How can I get my business to work without me? How can I get my people to work but without my constant interference? How can I systematize my business in such a way that it could be replicated 5000 times, so the 5000th unit would run as smoothly as the first? How can I own my business and still be free of it? How can I spend my time doing the work I love to do rather than the work I have to do? Understanding the Rules Here are the rules you’ll need to follow in order to get your business running like a franchise that produces predictable results: The model will provide consistent value to your customers, employees, suppliers, and lenders, beyond what they expect. The model will be operated by people with the lowest possible level of skill. The model will stand out as a place of impeccable order. All work in the model will be documented in Operations Manuals. The model will provide a uniformly predictable service to the customer. The model will utilize a uniform color, dress, and facilities code. There are 7 distinct steps to get there, which we’ll cover in turn. 1. Your Primary Aim Every entrepreneur starts a business for themselves. But we often get so tied up in the business that we forget that the ultimate aim of the business is to serve ourselves. Here are the questions you need to answer with 100% clarity if you want your business to serve you, and not the other way around. What do I wish my life to look like? How do I wish my life to be on a day-to-day basis? What would I like to be able to say I truly know in my life, about my life? How would I like to be with other people in my life – my family, friends, business associates, customers, employees, and community? How would I like people to think about me? What would I like to be doing two years from now? Ten years? Twenty years? When my life comes to a close? What specifically would I like to learn during my life – spiritually, physically, financially, technically, intellectually? About relationships? How much money will I need to do the things I wish to do? By when will I need it? 2. Your Strategic Objective Your Strategic Objective is a clear statement of what your business ultimately has to do in order to achieve your Primary Aim. It’s a list of standards you can use to measure your progress towards hyour ultimate goal. There are many standards you could include, but Gerber suggests that the first two on the list should be as follows. First, you need to be clear on how much money your company will make when it is ultimately “done.” Will it be a $1 million a year company? A $500 million a year company? Something else? How much after-tax profit will it make? That’s the money you are going to use to build the life that you want through your Primary Aim. Second, you need to build a business that can fulfill the financial standards you’ve set with the first standards. It tells you what kind of business you are creating and defines who your customer will be. From there, there are no specific number of standards that need to be created. But it will help if you answer some of the following questions: When is the ultimate version of your company (Gerber calls this the prototype) going to be finished? Where are you going to be in business? Locally? Regionally? Internationally? What type of business are you going to be? Retail? Wholesale? Something else? The standards that you create for your business will ultimately become the business you strive to create. Many entrepreneurs skip this step when they start, and never climb their way out of day-to-day operations of their business. 3. Your Organizational Strategy Gerber reminds us that most companies organize themselves around personalities rather than around functions. And the result, he suggests, is almost always chaos. The next logical step in building your business prototype is to determine the exact organizational structure you’ll need in order to execute on your strategic objective. Here’s how you’ll do it. Build an organizational chart for what your business will ultimately look like. For instance, you might need a CEO (which may or may not be you), a COO, a VP of Sales, account managers, and so on. Put your name in all of the positions that you currently fill. When you are starting out, this will likely be all of them. Create very detailed descriptions of each one of the positions, which Gerber calls Position Contracts. This is a summary of the results that need to be achieved by each position in the company, the work the person is responsible for, a list of standards that the results are to be evaluated against, and a line for the signature of the person who agrees to fulfil those responsibilities. Sign your name to each of the contracts you currently fill. The insight here is that you should create the system inside your business based on the standards you want to set, rather than letting other people do it for you. In order to free yourself up to work on the strategic parts of the business, you need to rest easy knowing that the tactical parts of the business are being taken care of. For instance, you don’t place an ad for a salesperson until you’ve created the Sales Operations Manual for the company. Once you’ve created the position contracts for each of the roles in the company, you’ll know exactly which standards you need to be hiring against. 4. Your Management Strategy Now that you have your organizational strategy created, you can move on to your management strategy. Gerber suggests that our management strategy is the system we create for the business. It shouldn’t and can’t rely on expensive and talented people. The more automatic and specific your system is, the more effective it will be. At its core, it is a series of checklists for everything that needs to be done inside the business. For example, a hotel would have a series of checklists for the people who clean the rooms. And another series of checklists for the people responsible for checking guests in. And so on. Finally, you should have a mechanism built into your system for following up on making sure that the work in the checklists is done properly. For instance, you could have your people sign a checklist at the end of each job letting the company know that the work had been completed based on the steps required. And then make it a fireable offence for signing off on work that hadn’t been completed. The benefits of a system like this are clear. You’ll be able to hire and train new people so that they’ll quickly be performing the tasks and producing identical results to people who have been doing them for a long time. 5. Your People Strategy At the heart of your people strategy is creating an environment where “doing it” is more important to them than not doing it. One of the key parts to making this happen is to ensure that the people you hire understand the reason behind the work they are being asked to do. As Gerber points out, people do not simply want to work for exciting people. They want to work for people who have created a clearly defined structure for acting in the world. A structure through which they can test themselves and be tested. In short, a game. The key, of course, is to make sure you are creating a game worth playing. Gerber describes the “game” a hotel owner had created where his hotel become a world in which the sensory experiences of his customer were greeted by a profound dedication to cleanliness, beauty and order. This went beyond the commercial justification and extended into the worldview the owner of the hotel had. It was then communicated to his employees in both words and actions. He communicated his idea through the systems they documented for running the business, and through his warm, caring manner. Importantly, he set the tone for this game at the beginning of his relationship with his employees – before they were hired. There were 5 distinct components to the hiring process: A scripted presentation communicating the Boss’ idea in a group meeting to all the applicants at the same time. It described his idea, but also the history of the business and their success in implementing the idea, and what would be required for the successful candidate for the position. Then he met with each applicant individually to discuss their reactions to his idea, and ask them why they thought they would be a good fit to implement the idea. He notified the successful candidate by phone with a scripted presentation. He notified the unsuccessful applicants, thanking them for their interest. On the first day of training, the boss did the following: Reviewed the boss’ idea; Summarized the system through which the entire business brings that idea to reality; Took the new employee on a tour of the facility, highlighting the people and systems that bring the idea to life; Answered the employee’s questions clearly and fully; Reviewed the Operations Manual with the employee, including the Strategic Objective, the Organization Strategy, and the Position Contract for the employee’s position. Completed the employment papers. This is how you bring the core values of your business to life. 6. Your Marketing Strategy Your marketing strategy lives and dies with what your customer wants, and how you deliver it to them. And understanding what your customer wants depends on you understanding the two pillars of a successful marketing strategy – the demographics and psychographics of your customers. When you first start your business, you’ll already have defined the demographics of your customers. Your next job is to figure out as much of the psychographics for that segment of the market as possible. What other brands do they buy? How are those companies – who are already successfully selling to those people – sell to them? What colors do they use? What messages are they sending? What values do they seem to be promoting? Then, you’ll take all of that information and figure out what your business must be in the mind of those customers in order for them to choose you over everybody else. Finally, you’ll make a promise your customer wants to hear, and then align your entire organization around delivering on that promise better than anyone else on the block. Of course, as your company continues to grow, you’ll continue to learn about the demographics and psychographics of your customers, and continue to iterate on your marketing strategy over time. 7. Systems Strategy The last piece of the puzzle in building your business is your systems strategy. There are 3 kinds of systems. Hard systems are inanimate, unliving things. Soft systems are either living things, or ideas. The core of the book and summary so far have been a combination of those two systems. The third system is the information system, which provides us with information about the interaction between the other two. As an example, if you have a sales system that tracks the sales steps from beginning to end (you should), you would be tracking some or all of the following items: How many calls were made? How many prospects were reached? How many appointments were scheduled? How many appointments were confirmed? How many appointments were held? How many Needs Analysis Presentations were scheduled? How many Needs Analyses were confirmed? How many Needs Analyses completed? How many Solutions Presentations were scheduled? How many Solutions Presentations were confirmed? How many Solutions Presentations were completed? How many solutions were sold? What was the average dollar value? In short, the information system should tell you everything you need to know about how your people are performing, so that you can meet your strategic objectives, so that you can meet your primary aim.
A habit is a routine or behaviour that is performed regularly, and in many cases, automatically. In the long run, the quality of our lives depends on the quality of our habits. This summary includes a step-by-step plan for building better habits – cue, craving, response, and reward – and the four laws of behaviour change that evolve out of these steps. There’s no one right way to create better habits, but this summary describes an approach that will be effective regardless of where you start or what you’re trying to change. The Fundamentals Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. However, the difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding. The effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. We often dismiss small changes because they don’t seem to matter, but over your lifetime, these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. Habits are a double-edged sword. Bad habits can cut you down just as easily as good habits can build you up. Your habits can compound for you or against you. Productivity, knowledge, and relationships positively compound. Stress, negative thoughts and outrage negatively compound. An atomic habit is a tiny change, a marginal gain, a 1% improvement. They are little habits that are part of a larger system. Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results. There are three layers of behaviour changes. The first layer is changing your outcomes, such as losing weight, publishing a book, or winning a championship. The second layer is changing your process, such as implementing a new routine at the gym, decluttering your desk, or developing a meditation practice. The third and deepest layer is changing your identity, such as your worldview, your self-image, or your judgements about yourself and others. The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become. Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. In order to become the best version of yourself, you must continuously edit your beliefs and upgrade and expand your identity. Habits can change your beliefs about yourself. A habit is a behaviour that has been repeated enough times to become automatic. The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible. Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward. The Four Laws of Behaviour Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are: 1) Make it obvious. 2) Make it attractive. 3) Make it easy. 4) Make it satisfying. The 1st Law – Make It Obvious Over time, the cues that spark our habits become so common that they are essentially invisible. Our responses to these cues are so deeply encoded that it may feel like the urge to act comes from nowhere. Therefore, the process of behaviour change begins with awareness. Before we can effectively build new habits, we need to get a handle on our current ones. This can be difficult to do, but there are two exercises that can help. Pointing-and-Calling is an exercise that involves verbalising each of your actions in order to raise your awareness from a nonconscious habit to a more conscious level. Once you’re aware of your habits, keep a Habits Scorecard and mark whether the habit is negative, positive, or neutral. Habits are easier to start if you have an implementation intention, which is a plan you make beforehand about when and where to act. The implementation intention formula is: I will [BEHAVIOUR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]. Habit stacking is another exercise that can help. The habit stacking formula is: After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]. Small changes in context can lead to large changes in behaviour over time. Every habit is initiated by a cue. We are more likely to notice cues that stand out, so make the cues of good habits obvious in your environment. Gradually, your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behaviour. The context becomes the cue. It is easier to build new habits in a new environment because you are not fighting against old cues. You can break a habit, but you’re unlikely to forget it. Once the mental grooves have been carved into your brain, they are nearly impossible to remove entirely. That means you must reduce exposure to the cue that causes bad habits. The 2nd Law – Make It Attractive The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming. Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. When dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act. It is the anticipation of a reward – not the fulfilment of it – that gets us to take action. The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine spike. Temptation building is one way to make your habits more attractive. The strategy involves pairing an action you want to do with an action you need to do. The formula is: After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT]. Social norms are extremely powerful, and they determine which behaviours are attractive to us. We tend to adopt habits that are praised by our culture because we have a strong desire to fit in. We tend to imitate the habits of three social groups: the close (family and friends), the many (the tribe) and the powerful (those with status and prestige). One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behaviour is the norm, and you already have something in common with the group. The normal behaviour of a tribe often overpowers the desired behaviour of the individual. Most days, we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than right by ourselves. Every behaviour has a surface level craving and a deeper underlying motive. Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires (ie the desire to connect and bond with others results in the habit of checking Facebook). Your habits are caused by the prediction that precedes them. The prediction leads to a feeling. You can break a bad habit by highlighting the benefit of avoiding it to make it more unattractive to you. Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings. Create a motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit. The 3rd Law – Make It Easy The most effective form of learning is to practice. Focus on taking action – the amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it. Human behaviour follows the Law of Least Effort. We will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work. Therefore, you are more likely to succeed if you create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible. Reduce the friction associated with good behaviours. When friction is low, habits are easy. Increase the friction associated with bad behaviours. When friction is high, habits are difficult. Habits can be completed in a few seconds but continue to impact your behaviour for minutes or hours afterward. Many habits occur at decisive moments – choices that are like a fork in the road – and either send you in the direction of a productive day or an unproductive one. The Two-Minute Rule says, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do” so break your habits down into bite-size chunks. Standardise before you optimise. You can’t improve a habit that doesn’t exist. Committing to habits will increase your future behaviour. The ultimate way to lock in future behaviour is to automate your habits. Prime your environment to make future actions easier. Automate your habits. Invest in technology and onetime purchases (like buying a better mattress or enrolling in an automatic savings plan) that deliver increasing returns over time. The 4th Law – Make It Satisfying Humans are more likely to repeat a behaviour when the experience is satisfying. The human brain evolved to prioritise immediate rewards over delayed rewards. The Cardinal Rule of Behaviour Change says, “What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.” To get a habit to stick, you need to feel immediately successful, even if it’s in a small way. The first three laws of behaviour change increase the odds that a behaviour is performed. The fourth law increases the odds that the behaviour will be repeated. One of the most satisfying feelings is the feeling of making progress. A habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit – like marking an X on a calendar on days you did it. Habit trackers and other visual forms of measurement can make your habits satisfying by providing clear evidence of your progress. Don’t break the chain. Do your best to keep your habit streak alive. If you do miss a day, try to get back on track as quickly as possible. Never miss twice in a row. We are less likely to repeat a bad habit if it is painful or unsatisfying. An accountability partner can create an immediate cost to inaction. We care deeply about what others think of us, and we do not want others to have a lesser opinion of us. A habit contract can be used to add a social cost to any behaviour. It makes the cost of violating your promises public and painful. Knowing that someone is watching you can be a powerful motivator, so use social interactions to motivate behaviour change. Advanced Tactics The secret to maximising your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition. Pick the right habit and progress will be easy. If you pick the wrong habit, it will be a struggle. You cannot change your genes, which means they provide a powerful advantage in favourable circumstances and a serious disadvantage in unfavourable circumstances. Habits are much easier when they align with your natural abilities. Choose habits that best suit your genes. Genes do not eliminate the need for hard work, they clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on. The Goldilocks Rule states that your motivation will be at its peak when you work on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard, not too easy. Just right. The greatest threat to success is not failure, but boredom. As habits become routine, they become less interesting and less satisfying so we sometimes get bored. Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It is the ability to keep going when it isn’t exciting that makes the difference. Create a schedule and stick to it, regardless of your motivation levels. The benefit of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors. You can master a habit by narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success and repeating it until you have internalised the skill. Then use this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier of your development. Each habit unlocks the next level. Keep building. Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time. Try not to cling to an identity – it makes it much harder to grow beyond it. Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, an endless process to refine. If you make habits obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying, you will be more likely to stick to them. If you keep making tiny changes, you will discover remarkable results.
I’d be surprised if you haven’t heard of the 80/20 Principle or what is also called the Pareto Principle, named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who first noticed the effect. Most of us know or talk about it in general terms, but have we considered how using it as a true guiding principle can benefit our businesses and ourselves? In his book, The 80/20 Principle: The secret of achieving more with less, Richard Koch does just that. He tells us by using the principle as a guiding light we can become more successful. If we can spot the few cases where the results relative to effort are so much greater than usual, we can become so much more efficient in whatever task we want to accomplish. The 80/20 Overture What is the 80/20 principle? In simple terms the 80/20 principle states that a minority of inputs or effort usually leads to the majority of the results, outputs or rewards. It doesn’t always fall into the 80/20 ratio. It could be 90/10, 75/25, 85/15 or any ratio where general cause and effect are significantly imbalanced. The observation remained relatively dormant for a number of years, but was resurrected during the quality revolution by Joe Juran who combined the principle with statistical analysis to root our quality faults and improve reliability. Only after the ascendency of Japanese goods did we sit up and take notice. Since then, the principle has influenced all industries: car, computing and consumer goods. Koch tells us that at the heart of the application of the principle is the process of substitution. If we can replace the 80 percent less effective activities and replace with more of the 20 percent effective activities, then productivity can increase. If we can focus more of our efforts on the 20 percent of our best customer and less on the 80 percent high maintenance customers, we can in turn increase our profitability. So why continue to make the 80 percent of products that only generate 20 percent of profits? As managers we rarely ask these questions, perhaps because to answer them would mean very radical action. It would mean to stop doing four-fifths of what we are doing. Chaos and Tipping Remember Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm in the blockbuster movie Jurassic Park when he was trying to describe Chaos Theory? We’ll I’m not going to try to do the same, but Koch suggests there is correlation between Chaos and Pareto, and that is the idea imbalance. Both theories suggest the world is not linear, and that cause and effect are rarely linked in an equal way. Some forces are always more forceful than others and will try to grab more than their fair share of resources. The 80/20 Principle aligns to the feedback loops identified by chaos theory, whereby small initial influences can become greatly multiplied and produce highly unexpected results, which can only be explained in retrospect. Koch suggests there are always a few forces that have an influence way beyond their numbers and these are the forces that we must identify and watch for. If they are forces for good, we should multiply them. If they are forces we don’t like, we need to think very carefully about how to neutralize them. Also related to the idea of feedback loops is the concept of the tipping point. We’ve all read or have heard of Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book, haven’t we? Well using this idea, Koch uses the example of an epidemic to show this might look or work. The tipping point is the point at which a low-level flu outbreak can turn into a public-health crisis because of the number of people who are infected and can therefore infect others. The principle also applies in reverse where small changes, like bringing new infections down to thirty thousand cases from forty thousand, can have huge effects. That’s Pareto in practice. On the 80/20 Highway Koch gives us two concepts to consider: 80/20 Analysis and 80/20 Thinking. 80/20 Analysis 80/20 Analysis examines the relationship between two sets of comparable data. One set of data is always a major sample of people or objects, usually a large number that can be turned into a percentage. The other set of data relates to some interesting characteristic of the people or objects that can be measured and also turned into a percentage. What is 80/20 Analysis used for? The 80/20 analysis in practice is used to change the relationship or to make better use of it because that is where the advantage lies. One way to do this is to concentrate on the key causes of the relationship (the 20 percent of inputs that lead to 80 percent of the outputs). You could also do something about the ‘underperforming’ 80 percent of inputs that contribute only 20 percent of the output. The goal here is to focus on the good and make better, or focus on the weak and make weaker. Koch gives a useful example. In US shopping malls it has been found that women account for the greater percentage of the dollar value of all purchases. Simply put women spend more. One way to increase the percentage of sales by men might be to build stores specifically designed for them. Koch gives us further advice on how we should approach the 80/20 Analysis. He suggests when we use the 80/20 Principle, we should be selective and go against normal thinking. We should not fall into the trap that the variable that everyone else is looking at is what really matters. This is linear thinking. The most valuable insight from the 80/20 Analysis will always come from examining non-linear relationships that others are overlooking (or may not be aware of). 80/20 Thinking Koch states that if we want the 80/20 Principle to be a guide in our daily lives, we need something less analytical and more instantly available than the 80/20 Analysis. What we need is 80/20 Thinking. He suggests, 80/20 Thinking requires us to spot the few really important things that are happening and ignore the mass of unimportant things. It teaches us to see the wood for the trees. To engage in 80/20 Thinking, we need to constantly seek out the 20 percent. We will not always know the answers, but need to engage in some creative thinking to identify the few vital few inputs or causes. The idea of 80/20 Thinking is therefore a second phase to the 80/20 Analysis. When we’ve identified an 80/20 cause we need to decide if it is beneficial to our objectives. Will it help us get better? And, if so how can we increase its impact. On the other hand if it’s not beneficial to our objective, we need to identify how we can frustrate its development. Koch suggests we focus. We do not need to look at being good at everything, but to be exceptional at fewer things. Like the principle itself, we should concentrate on a few areas, which can increase greater benefit from outperforming others. 80/20 101 Koch gives us a few immediate pointers to apply the 80/20 Principle to our businesses. 1. Think small Don’t plan to the nth degree. The return on investment usually follows this 80/20 rule: 80 percent of the benefits will be found in the simplest 20 percent of the system. This is especially true for software, where 80 percent of a product’s uses take advantage of only 20 percent of its capabilities. This means most of us pay for what we don’t want or need. 2. Segment and Focus In any market, some suppliers will be much better than others at satisfying customer needs. Over time, 80 percent of the market will tend to be supplied by this 20 percent or fewer of the suppliers – most of whom will also normally be more profitable. To get a share, we need to divide the market up into segments and identify which segments are in the 20 percent. If we are in too many segments, we need to get out of those that fall within the 80 percent or we need to analyze profitability to focus only on those where the 80/20 principle applies. 3. Make a Killing If you can identify where you’re getting back more than putting in, you can up the stakes and make a killing. Similarly, if you can work out where you’re getting back much less than investing, you can cut your losses. In this context, the ‘where’ can be anything. It can be a product, a market, a customer or type of customer, a technology, a channel of distribution, a department or division, a country, a type of transaction or even an employee, type of employee or team. 80/20 Strategies Koch claims unless we have used the 80/20 Principle to redirect our strategy, the strategy is badly flawed. We don’t have an accurate picture and almost inevitably we are doing too many things for too many people. He suggests we need to identify which parts of the business are profitable, which are just breaking even and which are disasters. In order to this, we need to conduct an 80/20 Analysis of profits by different categories of business such as product or product group/type or by customer or customer group for example. In the book, Koch provides a series of challenging investigations and asks the following questions: 80 percent of the profits made in any industry are made by 20 percent of firms. If you aren’t one of these, what are they doing right that you’re not? 80 percent of the benefit from any product or service can be provided at 20 percent of the cost. Many consumers would buy a stripped-down, very cheap product. Is anyone providing it in your industry? 80 percent of any industry’s profits comes from 20 percent of its customers. Do you have a disproportionate share of these? If not, what would you need to do to get it? When we’ve done the 80/20 Analysis of the above, Koch says only then can we set our 80/20 strategy that focuses on the 80/20 Principle. 80/20 Scale Here is Koch’s hypothesis: Simple is beautiful but business people love complexity. No sooner is a simple business successful than its managers pour vast amounts of energy into scaling it up. This in turn makes it much more complicated. Yet, additional scale is rarely just more of the same. Even if the customer is the same, the extra volume usually comes from adapting an existing product, providing a new product or adding more service. When business is simple, the chances are that it is closer to the customer. There is less management in the way. Customers can be heard, feel they are important and are willing to pay a lot more for this. So how can we scale at the 80/20 levels? Koch suggests the following: We should let go of the less profitable customers and products, cut off most support and sales efforts, raise prices and allow sales to decline at 5-20 percent. By doing so, we can bring simplicity and profitability back. Why do this you ask? Simply because difficult customers demand more resources. Become customer-centred for the few right customers. Successful marketing is all about a focus on the relatively small number of customers who are the most active in consuming your product or service. Focusing on 20 percent of your customers is a great deal easier than focusing on 100 percent of them. Focusing on all of your customers in an impossible undertaking, so why not choose to focus your time, energy and resources on those who impact your bottom line in a positive way? Koch gives us four steps to lock in our core customers: Step 1: Identify who the 20 percent are; Step 2: Provide exceptional service; Step 3: Target new products and service solely at them; and Step 4: Keep them forever. 80/20 Decision making Koch suggests we can make critical decisions in alignment with the 80/20 principle. We are going to apply it pervasively so decision making is no exception. Rule #1: Not all decisions are very important. Using the 80/20 split we should avoid agonizing over the unimportant decisions, and above all don’t conduct expensive and time-consuming analyses. If it is unimportant and has a 51 percent probability of success – go for it! Rule #2: The most important decisions are often those made by default because the chance to influence has passed. When this happens, no amount of data gathering and analysis will help you realize the problem or opportunity. What you need is intuition and insight – to ask the right questions rather than getting the right answers to the wrong questions. Rule #3: For a critical decision, gather 80 percent of the data and perform 80 percent of the relevant analyses in the first 20 percent of the time available and then make an assertive decision with 100 percent confidence. Generally you won’t be wrong. Rule #4: Simply, if what you have decided isn’t working, change your mind earlier rather than later. Rule #5: When something is working well, double and redouble your effort. You may not know why it’s working so well, but push as hard as you can while the force is with you. Conclusion That’s it. This summary covers 20 percent of the value of the book, but there is another 80 percent of benefit to accrue if you spend 20 percent of your free time reading it. Pareto promises!
Being an entrepreneur isn’t easy. But predicting the 5 most common frustrations you’ll face as an entrepreneur is. Here they are. A lack of control over your time, the market or your company. Frustration with your people, whether that’s your employees, customers or partners. They don’t seem to listen to you or understand your frustrations. Not enough profit. Hitting the ceiling on your growth. It seems that no matter what you do, you can’t get to the next level Nothing is working. You’ve tried so many new strategies that your staff is numb to new initiatives. The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) identifies Six Key Components of any organization. They are Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process and Traction. It’s a system that you can use to turn your business around, break through to the next level, and finally get control of your business. We’ll cover the 6 elements of EOS in turn. Let’s get started. Component # 1: Vision Successful entrepreneurs have compelling visions for their organizations, and know how to communicate it to their team. The part that most entrepreneurs run into trouble with is the communication. They assume that everybody else sees the vision as clearly as they do, and so they don’t communicate it enough. The solution is simple – get the vision out of your head and down on paper. Then, share it with everybody in the organization, and make sure that every single stakeholder understands it. From there, your team can decide whether or not it’s a vision they can get behind. Just this step clears up a surprising amount of confusion in a company. It gets everybody on the same page, and you’ll find that problems get solved much quicker as a result. There are 8 important questions you need to answer in order to craft your vision: 1. What are your core values? Your core values are a set of timeless guiding principles for your business. If you use them in your hiring, firing and reward process, these core values will become your culture. Choose them carefully. 2. What is your core focus? Other people have called this your mission or vision statements, but the idea here is that it should define exactly what your team will focus on while building your business. 3. What is your 10-year target? Where do you want your business to be in 10 years from now? This will let your team know exactly where you see the company heading. 4. What is your marketing strategy? Your marketing strategy in EOS is built around 4 elements. First, you need to understand your “3 uniques.” These are what make you different in the marketplace. You might share one or two of them with your competitors, but you should be the only one to do all 3. Second, you need a guarantee that pinpoints an industry problem and solves it. For instance, Dominio’s had it’s famous “30 minutes or it’s free” guarantee for pizza delivery. This has the secondary effect of rallying your team around a specific pain point your customer wants addressed. Third, there should be a proven process you use to deliver your product or service. You should be able capture that process visually, and explain it on a single piece of paper. It should have a name that you can own in the marketplace. Finally, your marketing strategy needs to include your target market. It should define their demographic, geography and psychographic characteristics. 5. What is your 3-year focus? Anything beyond a 3-year detailed strategic planning document for your business is wasted effort. 6. What is your 1-year plan? Your one 1-year plan is about bringing your long-term vision for the business to life. Less is more here. Don’t make the mistake that most companies make in trying to accomplish too many objectives. 7. What are your quarterly rocks? After you have your 1-year plan, it’s time to create your priorities for the next 90 days. In EOS these priorities are called “Rocks.” 8. What are your issues? Finally, you need to identify the obstacles that are in your way that might prevent you from achieving your goals. Being open and honest here is key. Now that you have your vision down on one piece of paper, it’s time to communicate it to the company in three events: Have a company meeting to unveil the vision. Every quarter, set the Rocks for each department/team in your company. Every quarter, have a state-of-the-union with your company and review the vision, and communicate newly set company rocks for the quarter. Component #2: People This section is simple, but incredibly hard. Great leaders surround themselves with great people and make sure that they have the right people for the right jobs. The right people share your company’s core values, and would thrive in your culture. Once you’re confident you have selected the right people, it’s important to get them in the right seats. That means all of your people are operating in their Unique Abilities and those abilities are clearly in line with their roles and responsibilities. The EOS has some strong opinions about how the main roles in your organization should be structured. First, there are 3 main functions in your business – (a) sales and marketing (which generates business), (b) operations (which provides the service and takes care of the customer), and (c) finance and administration (which manages money flow as well as infrastructure). Each of those functions must be strong. Second, in any business there needs to be somebody who integrates the major functions of the business. This, not surprisingly, is called an Integrator. They have the unique ability to run the business and manage the day-to-day issues. Third, in most entrepreneur-run organizations there is a final role of Visionary. This is usually the founder of the company. They are very creative, have a lot of ideas and solve big problems. When a company is small, it’s ok to have the same people in more than one of the above roles, but typically a company doesn’t break through to the next level until they find people who are uniquely suited for each of the 5 roles we’ve discussed. They are uniquely suited for the role if they pass the GWC filter. It stands for get it, want it, and capacity to do it. It’s critical that all three of those filters are met. Component #3: Data The best leaders rely on a handful of metrics to manage their business. Wickman suggests that we should be able to look at those numbers and have an absolute pulse on our business and how it is operating. As a rule of thumb, there should be between 5 and 15 numbers – bonus points for being closer to 5. It should include things like weekly revenue, cash balances, accounts receivable and payable and so on. Each company is going to have a different scorecard, but there are 3 rules of thumb to follow: The numbers on the scorecard should be weekly activity based-numbers, not high-level numbers you would see on a P&L. It is designed to be used as a proactive tool that helps you anticipate problems before they happen. You should “red-flag’ categories that are off track in order to keep the team focussed. Everybody should have a number. Component #4: Issues Successful entrepreneurs build companies that have the discipline to face and solve issues as they arise – they don’t let them linger for weeks or months. In order to do this well, you need to make sure that you are building a culture where people feel comfortable in calling out the issues that stand in the way of your vision. Not surprisingly, the Issues List is where the issues go to be solved. There should be 3 types of lists in your company. The Issues List in your Vision/Traction Organizer (your one page vision document.) These are issues that you can delay resolving for more than 90 days and will be tackled at future quarterly meetings. It will include things like new product ideas, technology needs and the need for HR policies. The weekly leadership team Issues List. These are issues that need to be solved quickly. The can include issues such as a Rock being off track, a bad number on the scorecard, major client difficulties or employee issues. The Departmental Issues List. These are issues that should be brought up and solved by department teams on a weekly basis. Perhaps your sales team is having issues hitting call numbers, and your operations team is having problems with customer complaints. Now that you’ve got your issues identified, you need to get them solved. Most companies suffer from talking issues to death. To solve this problem, Wickman suggests you use the Issues Solving Track which has three steps. Step 1: Identify Here you need to clearly identify the real issue holding you back. Most of the time, the stated problem is just a surface issue, and something deeper is happening that needs to be resolved. This is the most important step, and most of your time should be spent here. Step 2: Discuss This is everybody’s opportunity to say everything they have to say about the root issue. Nothing should be off limits, which will ensure that all the cards get on the table. Step 3: Solve This is the action item that solves the issue. It’s critical that whatever resolution is discussed gets into a todo list somewhere, with a date assigned to it. Otherwise, the issue never gets dealt with. Component #5: Process Your processes are how you run your business. This is the most neglected of the 6 components of the EOS. The issue is that in most businesses, most people do their jobs however they want, which creates huge inconsistencies and inefficiencies. Each company typically will have between 6 and 10 core processes, and how they work together creates your unique way of doing business. By clarifying and honing these core processes, you can run your business instead of having it run you. There are three stages here. 1. Identify Your Core Processes First, you need to identify your core processes. You should do this as a leadership team so that you agree on what they are and what you call them. Most companies will include processes for: The HR process, which is how you find, hire, manage and fire your people. The marketing process, which is how you get your message to your target market and generate leads. The sales process, which is how you convert a lead into a customer. The operations processes, which are the way you make your product or service for your customers. The accounting process, which is who money flows into and out of your company. The customer-retention process, which is the way you take care of your customers so they keep on buying from you and send you referrals. 2. Document each of the Core Processes: Next, you need to document the process. Typically this will be done by the person who is accountable for it. Each process should be documented at a high level, with several bullet points under each step which are the procedures. The more specific you are the better, because without the details you won’t be able to hold people accountable for following it. 3. Package It This is the easiest step. Your titles of the core processes now become the table of contents, and you put them into a binder or on the company intranet. When everybody follows the process, it’s much easier for everybody at the company to identify and solve issues, and therefore grow the business. Component #6: Traction: This is where the rubber meets the road. Turning a vision into results is the weakest link in most companies. The breakdowns usually occur around accountability and discipline, because this makes people feel uncomfortable. The solution is straightforward and includes two simple practices. First, everyone must set specific, measurable priorities. Second, you must set and follow a meeting pulse that ensures your vision is constantly being monitored and actions are taken to get you back on track when needed. Wickman calls the meeting pulse the heartbeat of your company. Meetings are a waste of time when run poorly. But when they are run well magical things can happen. For instance, if work is assigned to be reviewed at a meeting, it magically gets done right before that meeting. So, the more meetings you have, the more work gets done. There are two types of meetings. Quarterly Meetings The first type of meetings you’ll run are quarterly meetings. Here you’ll review your progress on your vision, and set your priorities (Rocks) for the next quarter. Most companies find between 10 and 20 things you’d like to close out. You should whittle that list down to between 3 and 7, and ensure that the ones you end up with are the ones that you absolutely must meet in order to achieve your vision. Then, set dates for when each of the Rocks are due. This will typically be at the end of the quarter. Then, make sure that each Rock is clearly owned by a person. Next, each person on the leadership team creates their own list of between 3-7 rocks for the quarter. Lastly, share the company Rocks with the entire organization and have each department follow the same process as the leadership team. Weekly Meetings The second type of meeting you’ll run is the weekly meeting. This will keep people focussed, and ensuring that the quarterly priorities are met. These meetings are called Level 10 meetings, and follow a specific agenda. A segue to start each meeting with good news (5 minutes) A scorecard review. Numbers that are off track get pushed to the issues part of the meeting. (5 minutes) A rock review, where everybody reports on/off track for each rock. Off track rocks are dropped to the issues part of the meeting. (5 minutes) “Headlines” is news from customers and employees, good or bad. (5 minutes) To-Do list review – these are the items that team members committed to having done for this week. (5 minutes) Issues List – this is where you solve pressing issues. In an average week you’ll have between 5-15 issues on the list. Determine what the top 3 are, and start processing them there. Work through the first issue until you are done. Then move onto the next one, and keep going until the 60 minutes for this step is over. (60 minutes) Conclude – this is where you frame the meeting and make sure there are no loose ends.
