EOS is becoming a household name. More and more small businesses are adopting the system to mature their organizations.

Many businesses start out with a few people doing one or a few single functions that are essential to generating revenue – sales, marketing, website, design, manufacturing etc. With growth, businesses can support the addition of accountants, managers, HR, and other important roles that are indirect to revenue. Further growth leads to the formation of teams and departments.

Companies often hit the ceiling when the business becomes too wide or complex for the founder to manage by themselves. At this stage, the quality of your organization and processes become apparent. If you have not installed any organizational scaffolding then growth can stall and people can burn out. EOS is a generic blueprint that can be applied to any business to install the essential pieces and processes you’ll need to advance. “Traction” by Gino Wickman is quick and clear read about the EOS at a 30,000 ft viewpoint.

What I valued about installing EOS was that beyond what to do it also guided you on the order of operations. Many business leaders feel a sense of urgency to solve all of their problems at once. EOS gives you the confidence to focus on 6 core components in order. This allows you to invest your energy into building a strong foundation. And to be frank, organizations have a fixed capacity for growth. If you change too much at once you will overwhelm your team and the lessons you want to teach will not take hold as firmly.

I’ll highlight two components that I felt were the most impactful:

1. Vision – Companies must know who they are, why they exist, what they value, and why they have been successful. Clarity on this is invaluable for keeping you on the right track for big and small decisions. Investing the time to discover this about your business can be return 10 fold. In doing so you’ll be surprised to find that people weren’t as aligned on the core elements as you assumed. The good news is that with this new alignment you will accelerate past old friction.
2. People – People are everything for your company. Great organizations have great people. It is essential to have the right people and to have them in the right seats. The task is to define the values or a person that is ideal for your organization so you can attract, select, or develop them. The other critical ingredient is the right structure. Many issues within companies arise from muddy roles and responsibilities. The EOS accountability chart helps to map your organization efficiently and communicate roles transparently to all.

Much of EOS will sound familiar to you if you have read the classics “Good to Great” or “Built to Last.” EOS applies the values and philosophies of these books into an executable form. EOS also expands on them with a library of other books that dive deeper into important pillars, like “How to be a Great Boss.”