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Lliam Holmes: Good morning, everyone. My name is Lliam Holmes. I’m the CEO and founder of MIS Solutions, and today we have Lynda Martin, who is one of our EOS implementers, joining us to talk about EOS. And specifically, what we’re going to be talking about is a framework for how to manage your business. It’s called the Entrepreneurial Operating System.
One question that we get all the time is, why does a company like MIS Solutions, a managed service provider, a technology company. Why do we use EOS? And I think there are probably two answers to that question. One is a lot of our customers depend on MIS Solutions to have very solid processes and procedures for how we run our business.
We see it as a competitive edge for the value that we bring to our clients. And at the same time, we also recognize as a small business that like you, a lot of us are trying to figure out how to scale. We’re trying to figure out how to grow our leadership teams. We’re trying to figure out how to be able to set goals and what they call in EOS rocks, to be able to make us a better organization.
Several years ago, we reached out to EOS. We interviewed some of their implementers and we picked Lynda Martin as our implementer. She’s really helped us implement the framework for EOS here at MIS Solutions.
And one thing I do want to make sure that we’re all clear about is MIS solutions is not an EOS implementer. Other than being a client and being a subscriber, we don’t sell EOS; we don’t consult around EOS, and we use Lynda as our implementer. And so that’s how we’ve really integrated it into our business here at MIS Solutions.
With that said, please welcome Lynda Martin.
Lynda Martin: Thank you, Lliam. One of the things I love about working with MIS is the generosity that Lliam and his team embody. They’re doing this because they see people that they interact with struggling with the same business issues that they are, and so they wanted to help other people learn the things that have helped them become a better, more sane, more peaceful, and more profitable business.
What I’m going to do today is walk you through what the model is that creates the structure. And I have to say this is genius. I can say this because I didn’t invent it. Gino Wickman did in the book Traction. I want to ask, how many of you have read Traction? Just raise your hand or put a note in the chat.
Because I want to make sure that if you’re all experts I’m talking at the appropriate level. We have learned that EOS is something that can deepen and expand in your business for 20 years. So there’s a lot that we’re not going to cover in the next 45 minutes, but I do want to make sure that you get the basics because you can start using it this afternoon.
We’re going to start with the basics. And even if you know the basics, this will help you clarify what you are doing, perhaps if you’re trying to use this in your business. The first thing is the model he developed, and if you have read the book, you have seen that.
The model is based on Gino’s discovery that there were six key components that help bring the 136 things that are hitting you every day into a kind of stream that you can actually manage in a reasonable fashion. That’s why I said at the beginning that if you implement EOS, what I see with the teams I work with is, yes, they come in because they want more money; they want more revenue; they want more profit; they want people to do what they want them to do. That’s usually the biggest frustration. People aren’t doing what I want them to do. But they also want peace of mind and the ability to go to their daughter’s gymnastics meet and not have to be on their phone the whole time.
So, that’s what I hope that you will start to get out of listening to this and watching this. I’m drawing for you the model and at the center is your business. There we go. And there the six key components that Gino found are really key to having a good business. You’ve got to have a clear vision.
You’ve got to know where you’re going to go and how you’re going to get there. And it also has to be clear enough that other people understand it. I don’t know how many business owners I’ve worked with who have a great vision here, but nobody around them really understands it. And if you ask the leadership team, you’ll get a number of different, slightly different versions, which creates a lot of confusion when you’re trying to get people to do what you want them to do. So vision is important.
Having the people who can get you to the vision is absolutely essential. And these are people that are good for you, not good for your competitor necessarily. So, we go through a process to discover what’s a good person for you and your company, and I’ll walk you through that in more detail after we’ve gone through the model.
And then finally, on the top half of the circle is data. What are the right numbers to watch? There are so many dashboards. There are so many KPIs and methods for tracking numbers that it can be overwhelming. So, what we help the team discover is what are the five to 15 numbers that matter the most? Simplifying is a theme here. You may have noticed.
When this is all clear, then you have a transparent, translucent organization. And you can identify issues. And issues are those problems those blocks in the road. Those things that come into your attention span one day and you go, oh my gosh, you duct taped it. Stick it under your desk. Hope it’s not going to blow up on you until you can get to it. It’s also ideas that can get lost in the chaos. It is also just things you need to share, but we want to make sure that issues are being brought up and solved on a regular basis, and that everyone in the organization has that ability.
The fifth key component is process, and for a lot of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial teams, slowing down enough to document a process feels very painful until you realize that you were asked 20 questions. Actually, you were asked the same question 20 times in the last month, and if you could document the process and train people on it and have them followed by all, then you wouldn’t have to answer that question 20 times.
A lot of really brilliant teams that I have worked with are carrying so much of a load on their shoulders because they haven’t clarified the process. They are just pushing it through with their own will. If that sounds like you, we’ve got some tools that can really help you with that. We won’t be going into those today, but we have tools that you can download and if you want a way to download those tools, please put your name in the chat.
Or, at the end of this, if you’re watching this on recording at the end, there will be contact information for me and I can get you what you need.
Finally, the last key component is traction and that is a kind of all-encompassing accountability and discipline component that makes the vision real.
Gino likes to say that if you don’t have consistent traction, then your vision is just a hallucination. I think he’s right. So that is the whole EOS model. Within each of these, there are two tools that we use to support and develop with our teams the strength of these six key components. We’d like to say that we want you to be 100 percent strong in each.
Sorry, that is not, that’s utopia. But we get our teams to 80 percent strong, and when we start with them, most of them are like at, quite honestly, at 20 to 30 percent. So today we’re going to dive into people and vision. If you want to know about the other tools, again, that’s a little bit beyond the scope of the time we have today, but you can reach out to me and I’ll be happy to walk you through that.
Oh, first I’m going to show you a prettier version of this model so that you will recognize it when you see it. And like I said, we’re going to start with talking about how people make the vision. It’s really tempting as someone who works with team leaders to start with vision because that’s a lot of times the most fun part. But we found that if we don’t start with some things that have to do with traction, then we do a disservice because I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a seminar where you had a beautiful notebook, a beautiful set of handouts, some great information, and you got back and I’m going to do this. And then nothing happens because 47 things are waiting in your email, on your desk, at your door when you walk in.
So our first tool under people is the accountability chart, and this is what we were talking about when we said ownership of roles is the key to getting what you want out of your people. If you’ve ever given someone instruction and then had them come back with something completely different than what you imagined, this is the beginning of the tools that we have to help prevent that from happening. I like to say that sometimes we, and I include myself because I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a high visionary, and I am perfectly clear in my own mind when I’m asking someone to do something, and so I will say, here’s an egg.
Would you take care of this until I get back? Now, what would you do with that egg? When I come back, I will say, how’s the egg doing? And you’ll say, it was great. I had salt and pepper on it. I put some jalapenos on it. It was great, and I’ll go, that was the fertilized egg of a very rare chicken. You were supposed to put it in an incubator.
How would you have known that? So, it is really important to show people what they can do. I’m going to draw a basic accountability chart that we use to help leadership teams define what it is they want people to do. And we start with there are really only three things that businesses do, and you can use this tomorrow to clarify what it is that you are trying to accomplish in your business.
The first thing, of course, is marketing and sales. Got to get people in, got to tell them what you’re doing, make them into customers. And then there’s what we call operations and that is delivering what you just promised them. And then finally. There is finance and administration. Money comes in, money goes out. Hopefully more money comes in than goes out.
There are things that are going on behind the scenes to make this all flow and work together. There’s one more role that is very important. And that is what we call the integrator. This is really a revolutionary concept that EOS came up with to help founders of businesses really understand what their strengths are and what their strengths are not, and how they can work together to deliver something that lights them up and makes them so excited to go into work in the morning. It’s the reason they founded their business, to use their own strengths.
So an integrator is a person who is really great at making these three key areas work together well. A visionary is a person who has a lot of big ideas. They are sometimes known for driving their people crazy because they come in with 15 new ideas every day, and one of them might be good, or maybe one a week is good, and then that turns the company around.
So you need both for each of these key roles. We identify what are their key responsibilities. So what is it? What are the five main things that this visionary is going to be responsible for, and what are the five key things that marketing and sales are going to be accountable for? We call this an accountability chart.
It’s like an org chart on steroids. We want to make sure that everybody is on the same page about what’s expected of them. When I work with a team, we’re going to customize this to your team and to the needs of your business, and we’re going to do it, sometimes every quarter if the company is growing fast enough.
Sometimes we’re going to look out a year and say, this is where we want to go in a year. Right now, we can’t quite get there, but we can at least have a map and guide our new hires and also decide who on the leadership team is most accountable for marketing and sales. If everybody in the company sells, that’s great.
However, somebody needs to be quarterbacking and that’s who holds the marketing and sales seat. Sometimes marketing and sales split up. Sometimes ops splits into two or three. Sometimes finance and admin splits up into like IT and HR and financial management. You want to be careful not to get too many. So if you’ve been trying this yourself, one thing that people can trip over is they’ll get a leadership team that is so big that they can’t really have effective meetings.
Once you’ve done this, then you’re going to roll it out through the whole organization and you’re going to wind up with something that looks like this.
And we call these functions and roles. You’ll notice there’s room for a name. We start with a structure. It’s almost like you fire yourselves and start over and try to figure out what does the business really need rather than that Mary is good enough. We love Mary and we’ve found something we think she can do.
So be sure to draw a function chart or an accountability chart by function and then add the names. The rule at the leadership team level – which are these top three – the rule at the leadership team level, which is, that you can only have one name in each box. As you get down further through the organization, you can put multiple names in the same box, but this helps the leadership team really define what it is that they’re going to be accountable for. And just like I used the example for sales, if everybody is involved in customer service, that’s great, but somebody needs to be looking at it, making sure it’s really working and making sure that the gaps are getting filled.
And when you start working on processes, then this is a great chart to have because you can start saying, okay, this function is accountable for that, and this function is accountable for this. How’s the handoff going? Makes for some great issue-solving sessions. So if you have people on your team that are tripping over each other, doing double work or things are falling between the cracks. Or you are feeling as an owner, like you have to watch everything all the time, this is your ticket to freedom, and it’s what we do on the very first day that we work with somebody.
The next thing I want to talk about is what happens once you’ve got some basic traction pieces in place. We want to decide, we want to get really clear and on the same page about what your vision is and how you’re going to implement that vision.
If we’re doing the full-on implementation, or if you’re trying this at home, then you want to start with this first question, which is, what are your core values? And it’s really important to take this seriously. Core values have gotten a bad rap lately because they’ve become something you put on the wall and something that people can, some people maybe can rattle off. It is, it doesn’t have any life to it.
I work really hard with my teams to discover what their core values are and to have it very much reflect the depth of the owner, the depth of the owner’s core values. And once we’ve discovered that and articulated it, then it gives a kind of clarity to hiring, to firing, to rewarding, and to really motivating – getting the best out of employees and even partners because now you don’t have to micromanage.
Between the accountability chart, just between the accountability chart and the core values. You’ve got a lot of very simple, clear information that you are passing on, and people can make decisions about what they’re doing. They can come up with ideas to help their work go more smoothly to help customers be happier and they can do it without having to come to you and do what we call fill your office with monkeys.
If an employee has a question and they come to you, oftentimes we say they have a monkey and they have this monkey sitting on their shoulder and they want to ask this question. Their goal is to give you the power to make the decision so they don’t have to. The question to ask is, what would you do?
And then listen and say whether you think that’s a good idea or not, or help draw them out and help them formulate a decision about what they should do. If you don’t do that, what you have at the end of the day is a lot of monkeys in your office or in your email. Instead, give them back the monkey.
The accountability chart and core values really help with that process and allow our owners and founders and leaders to let go and do what they do best and help inspire and motivate the people who report to them – to do what they do best.
Now, to support that, we have seven other questions. We call this the eight questions or the Vision Traction Organizer. And again, if you want a copy of this that you can edit and create for yourselves, let me know. I’ll help you get it, or I will even help you walk through the beginnings of it. There’s a 90-minute workshop that we can do to get started on this. Lliam will tell you more about that later. So the core focus is the next key question and the important thing here is that the leadership team is all aligned.
This is not all on the founder. This takes some weight off the founder’s shoulders. I love to see, after about six months, I swear, many of my founders, like their shoulders were here, and after six months, they’re here, and they’re talking about the things they’re doing that they love to do. And that just fills the whole organization with more joy and more innovation and power. Part of that power comes from knowing what the core focus is, and we say there’s a core focus that is your purpose, cause, or passion that is not industry-specific.
And then there’s a niche, and we also call this our anti-shiny object. Because I don’t know if any of you as entrepreneurs or any of you who work for entrepreneurs have ever experienced the – I used to work for a very large entrepreneurial company, and if you got in the elevator with the owner after he’d gotten off Delta and read what was in the management magazine, the management column in the Sky Miles magazine, he would reorganize whatever your latest project or department was.
In the elevator on the way up. It was very disruptive. So this helps people remember, oh yeah, this is what we’re here to do. Orville Redenbacher’s niche is popcorn. When people tried to make him do Cracker Jacks, he was like, no. Popcorn. So that’s a very simple core focus.
Where are you going to be in 10 years? You notice we just have a small box here, not a 40-page strategic plan. Just what does it look like in 10 years? Is there an award you want to win? Is there a number you want to hit? Is there a number of people you want to impact? Keep it really simple.
And then, what is your marketing strategy? Again, keep it simple. We want to make sure that you know who your best clients are. We call that the target market, the list. Who are they? What do they want?
And then what are the three unique things you bring to them and how do you do it? That’s the proven process. And do you have a promise or guarantee? And then finally on the vision thing is what does it look like in three years?
We’re going to put some numbers and dates on there, and then we’re going to put 10 to 15 bullets. What does it look like? Is it a different office? Is it five locations? How many people do you have? What does your day look like? So that’s the vision that you can sit down with this piece of paper and really think through for yourself.
Or do it with your leadership team. It’s much more effective if you do it with your leadership team. Sometimes that can be a little daunting. That’s where someone like me can maybe help.
And then the traction page, if you look at the second page, that’s where, ha ha, rubber meets the road, right? That’s what traction is. The three-year picture has given you the magic. The one-year plan is now based on where you want to be in three years. Three to five, maybe seven goals, not 23, never works. And then the rocks are what are you going to accomplish in the next 90 days because you want to be really clear about that.
There are so many distractions. What are the three to five things that the company needs to focus on? And then what each individual leader needs to focus on. And then everything else goes on the issues list. That is what we call the therapy list. Get it out of your head, get it out of your heart. What wakes you up at two in the morning? Get it all on that list and then we’ll prioritize how we deal with it.
That is the Vision Traction Organizer. That is, we have found, if you get everyone on the team looking at this and everybody’s clear about it, it does amazing things to turbocharge the human energy in your organization. It takes a few months to get it to that level.
Alright, so then further bringing it down, there is something called the People Analyzer.
And this is where we pull together what we’ve just been working on. You’ve identified your values, you list them on the top here, and then you rate people. So we’ve got Brian and Amy here, and we’re going to rate them as a plus, plus-minus, or a minus. So, plus means that they are going to exhibit behaviors that align with those values in a really consistent way. Nobody’s perfect plus-minus; they’re pretty good at it and minus.
So there are really only two kinds of people problems. One is, do you have the right person? They hold your values; you love them. But they’re not in the right seat on the accountability chart. And that’s where this second part over here comes in: Get it, want it, capacity.
And there, it’s either yes or no. If somebody has your values and you love them, you need to find them a seat. Or they get what they’re supposed to do, or they know what they want, that they want it, they get up wanting it, and they have the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual capacity to do it.
Sometimes people really want it. A function on the accountability chart. They do great with it, and then they master it and they start getting bored. We use the accountability chart to keep up with that so that you don’t lose really great people.
Finally, you want to set a bar. So how many people, how many pluses and plus-minuses are you going to allow? If you have five core values, we suggest three pluses and two plus-minuses is the bar. If somebody is falling below those, then you want to coach them.
Now, values are attributes, so you can’t always coach somebody to a higher value, but sometimes somebody’s got something going on at home, and it’ll start showing up in the way they’re showing up. And this gives you a way to talk with them about what you’re seeing that’s not confrontational but allows them to be vulnerable.
And we really preach open and honest and vulnerability in this whole EOS system because we have found it is so powerful in growing a company. It may sound counterintuitive, but I just have to say I’ve seen it over and over again. And then the same with get it and capacity. If somebody does not get their job, then maybe they need some training.
So the GWC is what we call it in shorthand. The GWC can be trainable, but sometimes it’s not either. If they don’t want it, you can’t make them want it. Don’t waste your time. Don’t torture them. I have seen key people in an organization come to the realization they really don’t want it anymore. And the organization and they both benefited from having them find a place even outside the organization. Because guess what? They’re sending referrals. because they love you after you help them do that. It is a way to give some black-and-white data on something that can feel really fuzzy.
The core values tie back into the vision. The get it, want it, capacity ties back into the accountability chart. What makes this so powerful is that as a team, you have done the work to define what you need and want from the people that are working for you and with you. We even recommend putting on the accountability chart your vendors, some of your contractors. So often the reason somebody doesn’t do what you wanted them to do, what you thought was a clear, simple expectation, is because it’s very clear to you, but it’s not clear to them. Go back to my example of handing somebody an egg and saying, take care of it.
The most important thing I think, to talk about with the EOS model altogether – I’ve given you an example of several tools. We have about 20, and what is amazing is how each of the tools reinforces each other. You can see how the accountability chart and core values reinforce each other to get the most out of people in a joyful way, not in an, I’m telling you what to do. I’m making you work so that you never see your family. That’s not what we’re saying at all.
It’s more that you get into this partnership that brings out the best in your people, and I think that’s what I’ve seen here at MIS. The more we’ve gone into this system, the more people have been happy to work here and when people, it’s one of the great joys and realizations of my life is that happy employees give you more of what you need. They are innovative. They’ll give you the extra, they will find new ways to do things that are better. They’ll even come up with crazy ideas that work and that’s what you want, and they’ll be enthusiastic.
One of the biggest drags on a company is when they don’t involve their people and they don’t give them clear direction. My example of being in the elevator with the founder of our $350 million company who’s turning things on a dime all the time, that we were always crashing into each other, some of the most bright, innovative, hardworking people I have ever known burning out in a year or two. So that’s part of the passion. My passion for this is that was painful. We had big visions, we had big impact, and we blew it. They ended up being sold and sold again, and losing that special flare that had made them so successful.
So we’re seeing the opposite here at MIS. It’s growing, it’s getting better. I’d like to see if there are any questions at this point and ask Lliam to come up and share some of his experience.
Lliam Holmes: So I’ll tell you what, while you’re waiting on questions, I’ll tell you as a client from our side of this, we knew that we had a really good product. We had put a lot of time and effort into developing our people, into developing processes in hiring our people.
But what we didn’t have was something that tied all of those bits and pieces together in a way that allowed us to be more efficient. When we talk about what’s that end goal look like, I can tell you, as I reflect back on our journey and I look all the way through to where we are today, core values are probably one of the most important things for us because it not only gives us a really clear way of saying, do we have the right people, but what I found was it also gives us a really clear way in the interview process.
To identify, do we have somebody that we can bring in that’s going to match our core values? And I think this was really important for us because it gave our managers something really black and white to look at that they could make a judgment rather than a gut feel of, I think this is the right person.
We had something that we could look at and we could all talk about. And we were all aligned with to say, we’ve got three really great candidates, which is going to be the best candidate for us based on our core values, based on that people analyzer that you talked about. And so from a client experience, that would be something I’d want to share and how it’s helped us.
Lynda Martin: I just wanted to add onto that that there’s another – I said, there are two client issues: the right person, but not the right seat. There’s also the person who’s in the right seat and is highly productive, but they don’t hold your core values and you’ve experienced this as well. They tear your culture from within and they ultimately have to go. That’s one of the hardest decisions.
Lliam Holmes: For sure, and it really is a mix, right? You have to have somebody who not only has the right skills, but they also embody your core values, right? It’s a mix. You need both of those things, and sometimes even then in your GWC that get it, want it, capacity to do it, maybe they have all the right skills, maybe they have all of your core values, but they don’t have the capacity. And when we say capacity, I know for me, when we first started thinking about capacity, we were thinking, is this mental capacity, is this skillset capacity? What does capacity mean? And I think one of the things that we came to realize was that capacity literally might simply mean not enough hours in the day.
And so you’re thinking about, okay, what is on their plate? What is that time inventory? And I know that EOS has some tools to help with this so that you can really position that person where they have capacity. If capacity as it relates to time in the day is the issue from really turning that, that B player or maybe even the B-plus into a really solid A or, possibly even an A-plus player.
Lynda Martin: Right. It is time capacity, as well as mental, physical and emotional capacity. Sometimes people need skills training to develop that. Yeah. So one of the questions we have is what is the ideal size of a company to implement EOS?
This system was developed for companies with 10 to 250 people. We don’t really put dollar values on it anymore because we found it’s really about 10 to 250 people because that’s when things start getting complicated. And that’s when you start needing systems. We also have a subsystem, if you will, or another expression that is for companies nine and under that we’ve just started doing. And so if you fall into that category, please let me know and I will connect you.
Ten to 250 people. That said, about 10% of our companies are outside that on either end and some very large companies are using EOS.
Lliam Holmes: And I’d like to share something that at least resonates for me. Many of you guys know Jennifer and I started MIS Solutions out of our home.
And when we were really small, we would eat breakfast together. Our employees would show up in the morning and we would all sit down around the kitchen table and we would eat breakfast together. And that was fantastic because when there were 3, 4, 5, 6 of us, we didn’t need a lot of documentation.
We didn’t need a lot of processes. We were always able to ask somebody, and it was really a collaboration with all of us who had the knowledge that we needed to be able to serve our clients. But inevitably, as we grew to 10 people, 20 people, 30 people, 40 people and so forth, what we found was that you needed systems to now start to come in, to be able to really put a lot more on process and a lot more on documentation.
A lot more on risk management and. This was really, I think, the point at which we turned to EOS because we knew that we could see at the current rate that if we continued to grow, we were going to end up with silos. We would end up with groups of people who knew a lot about their function, but really didn’t have the ability to know what was happening in another part of the company.
And so we started looking for something that could help us with that. And I think EOS has done a really good job in giving us some tools and some foundations that we could put in place early on that would help us try to get to that next level. And I’ll tell you, for us in full transparency, when we first started with EOS we thought, hey, we’re really smart people. We are going to self-implement. We are going to buy the books. We’re going to all read the books. We’re going to designate somebody in our organization to be that sort of implementer, if you will. And we tried to self-implement.
Through that process, we recognized that having someone who is not part of MIS, somebody who doesn’t have a lot of background or endemic knowledge, was actually really important to us. Because they were able to facilitate conversations without being associated with any one group. And that’s really where we brought you in, Lynda, to really help us from a facilitator perspective and help us figure out how to have somebody who was an expert in the tools, an expert in the framework but really didn’t know a lot about MIS at the endemic or day-to-day level, in helping us solve some of the problems that we were having and things that we could see.
And I think that really helped us create a roadmap, and it really helped us with our VTO that one-year, three-year, and 10-year plan, to really start to vision cast and look out. But it really started with us and that journey from, six people around our kitchen table all the way to where we are now.
Lynda Martin: I love that. it’s one of the things I love most about doing this is the enthusiasm that was around that kitchen table, that sense of collaboration. I consider EOS to be like jewelry. I love jewelry. So it’s the facets of the jewel are what you were creating. And then if anybody’s invested in jewelry, they know the setting is critically important to make that jewel shine. And that’s how I see the system. So we’re putting these six prongs in place and it’s making that jewel just shine whatever is unique and special about your organization.
Lliam Holmes: Yeah, for sure. And I can tell you we didn’t probably start EOS until we were, gosh, 25 or 30 people. Knowing what I know now, six people was probably a little early, but somewhere between 12 and 15 people would’ve been great. It took us another 10 people before we had enough noise where we could see the noise was going to hurt. And that we needed a better way and, not the speed speeds and flashing lights, not the technology stuff we were great with, but really just that how do we develop our people? How do we develop our managers? How do we get a framework, how do we get beyond where we want to go in a way that was productive and in a way that everyone felt that they were meaningful and important to the process, and that they were aligned to what our goals were.
And so that really the only thing for us is I wish we’d have started it maybe a little bit sooner. And we got a few bumps and bruises along the way.
Lynda Martin: Sometimes people who have the bumps and bruises, they take it more seriously. They really understand what they’re getting into or what they’re trying to get out of.
If you have a company that’s got 80 people, they’ve got some remodeling to do and that can be painful and it takes a little longer. So yes, I wish everybody would start at 15 people. And that said, it’s also a lot of fun to take somebody that’s got 80 people and watch, like I said, the shoulders come down and the tensions unfold, and sales go up, and profits go up.
So there’s another question along the same lines about how do we know if our companies are right fit and what should we consider before implementing, and I think Lliam’s been addressing a lot of that. We also have a get-to-know-you process so that we can figure out if it’s a good fit for you.
I don’t want to work with a company that’s not a good fit because that’s embarrassing for all of us. I value what EOS can bring and if it’s not going to work for you, I don’t want to do it. That said, what I’ve seen is when it works, it’s because the owner, the founder, is willing to make some hard changes and choices. If the owner’s not bought in, then it’s not going to work.
Lliam Holmes: Yeah. And I think it’s a fair statement, right? At the end of the day, EOS implementers are humans.
Lynda Martin: No. And so who told you?
Lliam Holmes: When you’re looking for an EOS implementer, I think it’s really important that you find somebody who has the same values, the same style, somebody that you feel is a good fit. It’s, almost like hiring an employee, right?
Somebody who’s going to really fit with, and somebody that you can say, hey, I really respect their experience, or I could see how, where they’ve been, would be a really great compliment to our team. And I know that we went through that process and what we did, and Lynda, I know that you know this. When we had gone through the self-implementation process, and we were like, Hey, that’s harder than you may think, and we see the value in paying somebody to do that for us, we had gotten ourselves mentally, at least to the point where we were like, we want the best implementer that there is.
And we had a relationship with Gino Wickman. We went to Gino, and we said to Gino, Hey, we are in Atlanta. Who are the best people in Atlanta? And we interviewed those two or three folks and we were really looking for that core value fit. And obviously Lynda, we picked you. You’ve been with us for a number of years really around making that fit.
Because I think that when you have somebody who’s aligned with you, somebody who has that experience, and somebody who can really be trusted in your leadership team, it amplifies that value that you’re going to get because it’s somebody who you know and trust.
Lynda Martin: Let’s see, there’s another question. There are some really good questions here. How does EOS improve communication and decision-making within our leadership team? And I have to say that this is one of the great strengths of this structure. The cadence, there’s a, we didn’t get into that today, but there’s a cadence of meetings and a brilliant agenda, simple agenda that if the same time, the same place you’re having the meetings and going through the agenda, there’s a cadence that begins to open the team to really be open and honest and vulnerable with each other.
Lliam Holmes: Yeah. You know something, I think it’s also really important, or at least it was, is just simple terminology. Yes. It was easier for our leadership team to get on the same page when they called things the same thing. And so just something as simple as having a vocabulary that we could all speak with was really important. Something unexpected, at least for us, was as we started to get into EOS and we started to implement that at MIS Solutions, what we started to see on the sales side was that when we had a prospect that was also an EOS company, guess what? They speak the same language we do. And so we can tell very quickly when somebody calls us, and they need help if they are an EOS-based company because we start talking about L 10 meetings, we start talking about VTOs and people analyzers and rocks and all of the same sort of thing.
And I think it creates really quick alignment because the way they run their business is the way that we run our business, and all of a sudden, our frameworks are immediately aligned because we’re able to speak directly to how they run their business, and we didn’t think about that maybe upfront.
It wasn’t even a goal of what we were trying to do, but what we’ve seen over the years that we’ve been doing EOS, companies that are run in the same way seem to somehow find each other. And we have this sort of common terminology that I think is a really great way that we can add value to each other.
Lynda Martin: And to your earlier point, it really is a competitive edge because you don’t get bogged down in things that other companies in your same space get bogged down in and yes, it is part of our dream and our passion that EOS companies will work together. And that we can have hundreds of leadership team members in the same conference, and they’re all talking the same language and helping each other.
Lliam Holmes: Yeah. So, Lynda, I think this has been really awesome, and I know from my experience there are a lot of rabbit holes to go down here. There are a lot of different tools, there are a lot of insights and the reality of it is I wish that all businesses were the same. They’re just cookie-cutter. But they’re not. Every company is so unique. Their culture is unique. Their founder is unique. What they do and how they perceive the world is unique. And so, really, it’s impossible to have a one-size-fits-all. And one of the things that, you know, is in our core value is to always find ways to give back.
And Lynda, I know you and I worked together, and one of the things that we put together was for you to be able to dig deeper and maybe work with another leadership team to give 90 minutes of your time to sit with that company, hear some of the things that they’re struggling with, maybe introduce them one-on-one to some of the tools around some specific pain points.
And Lynda has graciously agreed. If you’re considering EOS, if this sounds like it is even just interesting to you, Lynda would be happy to come and sit with your leadership team, or just the owner if you don’t have a leadership team yet and talk about EOS, talk about some of the tools, to share some of the experience and the insights and really just try and help that company be successful.
On the screen, we have Lynda’s contact information, her email address and her phone number. That’ll be a great way for you guys to reach out to her directly. If you’d like to set up that 90-minute one-on-one with your leadership team as well as some of the documents that we’ve shared today – the traction organizer, the model, conceptually in itself, that VTO some of these things, if you guys would like copies of these documents that don’t cost anything, but, get with Lynda. Lynda will be happy to get you guys a copy of that. And whether you decide to self-implement or decide to read Traction and really, start to understand or if you’re ready to have a conversation, our goal here at MIS is really just to be able to pour into our clients, pour into people, who are interacting with us, our champions, and really help you guys be successful. And again, we’re not selling anything. We are not EOS implementers in any way at all. But it is a process, a tool that we use internally.
Obviously, we think very highly of you, Lynda, and we would like to share you with all of our customers and people who are trying to also take that next step. And with that, thank you for offering to do that. And thank you for coming today to talk a little bit about EOS.
And, again, if anyone has any questions, you have Lynda’s contact information. And, I know she’d love to hear from you.
Lynda Martin: Absolutely. It’s one of the things I love most about this is being able to, if we just have a 15-minute conversation, maybe I’ll say something that will help you or you’ll answer your own question just because you’re thinking it through in a different way.
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