Entrepreneurial Operating System®
EOS®, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, was created to help entrepreneurs get what they want out of their businesses. EOS is a simple and practical system that gives you control over your company and helps your organization communicate better. Everyone in the company will be on the same page and move in the same direction. This improves business operations, helps your business grow, and provides greater balance in your life. Implementing EOS helps your leadership team improve in three areas:
Vision—100% of your people 100% on the same page with where you’re going, and how you plan to get there.
Traction®—Bringing focus, discipline, and accountability across your company so everyone executes on your vision, daily.
Healthy—Getting your leadership to become a cohesive, functional, healthy team.
Ninety is a software designed for EOS that helps entrepreneurs execute EOS so it is adopted throughout their entire organization.
The EOS Model™
The EOS Model™ provides a visual illustration of the Six Key Components™ of any business that must be managed and strengthened to be a great business. This model applies to big and small businesses alike, in any industry.
The EOS Process™
The EOS Process™ provides a proven way to put all the pieces together, incorporating each of the EOS Tools in the right order to best strengthen each key component of your business.
Ninety helps you stay organized in each of these key components so you can have complete visibility into as many teams as you have running EOS.
Focus Day™
This is usually the first day on a company's EOS journey. A day to give your leadership team tools to clarify who’s responsible for what, set priorities, improve communication, resolve issues and track critical numbers.
Vision Building™
After the Focus Day, a company will typically move into two Vision Building Days.
Vision Building™ Day 1: Another full day with your leadership team that reviews and sharpens the Focus Day tools. You begin to use the Vision/Traction Organizer™ (V/TO) tool to clarify vision. This is critical for deciding who you are, why you exist, what you do and where you are going. The second tool you will use during the day will be to review your people.
After Vision Building Day 1, your team uses the tools for the next 30 days to experience more improvement.
Vision Building Day 2: Your team spends the day together to continue using the V/TO to clarify your Marketing Strategy, 3-Year Picture™, 1-Year Plan and priorities for the next 90 days.
Ninety allows you to keep all of this information in a cloud-based platform.
The EOS Toolbox™
The EOS Toolbox™ is a complete set of tools addressing and strengthening all Six Key Components™ of any business. These management tools for business leaders are designed to be easy to learn and use, because complexity reduces effectiveness.
Ninety has built off these tools by developing software compatible with each of the key components.
The Six Key Components™
Six Key Components™ of any business: Vision, People, Issues, Traction, Process and Data. Description of each of these are below.
The Vision Component™
You can't start without knowing where you are going. The Vision Component tells us getting everyone in the organization 100 percent on the same page with where you’re going and how you’re going to get there is critical to building a successful organization. Businesses build out their Vision through a V/TO™ - details on the V/TO below.
The People Component™
You can’t do anything without great people. When you hire and fire based off your Core Values, GWC and other EOS Tools™, you can start surrounding yourself with great people, top to bottom.
The Issues Component™
Issues should be set up and solved week to week. By strengthening The Issues Component™ your team can become great at solving problems. Your company's "Issues" doesn't have to be just problems, it can be opportunities or ideas - see more on Issues above.
The Traction Component™
The Traction Component™ is strong when your Rocks are SMART and Meeting Pulse is on track. Discipline and accountability are required to strengthen this component, and allow you to take the vision down to the ground to make it real.
The Process Component™
“Systemizing” your business by identifying and documenting your core processes are critical to achieving success in the Process Component™. Get everyone on the same page with what the essential procedural steps are, then ensure everyone is following them to create consistency and scalability in your organization.
The Data Component™
Data allows you to cut through the feelings, personalities, opinions and egos to look at your business objectively. The Data Component helps leadership teams boil their organization down to a handful of numbers that give them a pulse on where things are.
In Ninety you can see these numbers both on the Scorecard tied to seats on the Accountability Chart (so everyone knows where they stand) and on the Scorecard to review weekly during your L10 Meeting.
10-Year Target™
A 10-Year Target™ allows you to think ahead ten years and write down specifically what you want from the business. Thinking ahead will help you take steps back to frame what today will need to look like to get there.
Ninety allows you to set your 10-Year Target™ on your Vision/Traction Organizer™ so your teams can always have a clear vision of where you are heading.
3-Year Picture™
A 3-Year Picture™ helps leadership teams accomplish the following:
Each team member will see where your business is going and decide if they want to be a part of that scenario
Outline your goals in the one-year planning process.
Achieve your goals. The probability of that picture becoming reality increases when you just write them down.
The 3-Year Picture is part of your V/TO™ and in Ninety, each team can have its own 3-Year Picture.
90-Day World™
Accomplish annual goals by living/planning out 90 days at a time. With 3 to 7 90-day Rocks (or objectives) which are specific, measurable and achievable, you can get the company 25% of the way towards achieving the annual goals.
Clarity Break™
Taking time to yourself to just sit and think is just as important as working. Go to a place away from the office where you will be uninterrupted. Some leaders do this on a weekly or even daily basis, while others prefer to schedule time on a monthly basis. Either way, keep it consistent – and don’t use the time to catch up on busy work, personal emails, or errands. Instead, reflect on the business by reviewing your Vision/Traction Organizer™ (V/TO™) or upcoming goals. You can even read, thinking strategically or reviewing the EOS Model™ you have set in place. When you are done, you will be re-energized and prepared to offer clear leadership to your people. Taking a time out for yourself, makes you a more confident, focused leader.
Compartmentalize™
Prioritizing and placing everything in the right areas to makes it easier to solve business problems. This is also the essence of great time management. Once compartmentalized, we simply decide what we will do, both short-term and long-term, to resolve each issue.
Core Focus™
Developing and clarifying an organization’s reason for being. EOS calls this your Core Focus, your company’s compass setting, in order to develop providing direction for setting long and guidance related to long term and short-term goals setting.
Delegate and Elevate™
Don't spread yourself too thin by working on tasks that others could be accomplishing for you. Either stop doing or delegate the excess capacity items to the people around you until you're realistic hours/week. As a leader in your organization, you must operate in your sweet spot. This makes you more valuable, gives you more energy, and makes you happier, which then leads to you being a much better leader for your people.
GWC™
Having every person in the right seat is essential to being a great organization. GWC enables you to make those proper placements. GWC stands for “gets it”, “wants it,” and “capacity to do it,” the only three criteria in determining if a person is operating within his or her true skill set.
LMA™
Poor leadership and management are an epidemic in the entrepreneurial world. LMA stands for lead, manage and hold accountable. Anyone in a senior level position needs to be sure to:
care about their employees
make clear the major functions of each department and select the right leader to drive and manage each function
decide – indecision isn’t an option
communicate to have your whole team on the same page, sharing common values and a common purpose.
Organizational Checkup™
A quick 20 question survey to see how well you’re doing as an organization.
Quarterly Pulsing™
A day with your leadership team every 90 days to evaluate their performance, refocus, set priorities for the next 90 days and resolve any issues that might impede progress. The quarterly pulsing is with the whole senior leadership team and usually occurs away from the office to allow for a full day of focus.
Sales Department Checkup™
It is vital that your sales department to drive your organizations revenue goals. Apply this simple checklist to make sure that all disciplines are in place and strong.
Same Page Meeting™
This meeting allows you to bring all of your issues, concerns, ideas, and disconnects; then identify, discuss and solve (IDS) them. It is extremely effective for the Visionary and Integrator to do this weekly to keep you in sync. That then leads to you presenting a united front at the presence of your people, along with a consistent message that eliminates organizational confusion and complexity.
The 3-Step Process Documenter™
This is the very simply approach to documenting all your main processes in your company. The first step is identifying each core process, then documenting them and ensuring they were followed by all. Every organization has a handful of core processes that make the business run. Usually these include:
The HR process—hiring, managing, reviewing, promoting, retaining, and firing
The Marketing process—messaging to your target market audience and generating leads for your salespeople
The Sales process—converting a prospect into a customer
The Operations process—making the product or providing the service to your customer
The Accounting process—managing the flow of money coming in and going out
The Customer Retention process—taking care of customers, keeping them coming back, and generating referrals
The 5-5-5™
The 5-5-5 is a quarterly meeting with your direct reports. It is a way to stay connected and on the same page while making minor course corrections on the way towards completing quarterly priorities. The 5-5-5 is a space to discuss roles and responsibilities, and to make sure they’re still happy and meeting your expectations.
The 5-5-5 should be an informal conversation. It ISN’T a formal, documented performance review.
The 8 Cash Flow Drivers™
8 things that affect cash flow in your business. The leadership team brainstorms these things so that they can be identified and measured frequently. Things to think about are: What drives profits up and/or what drives expenses down?
The next critical step is deciding which leadership team member is accountable for each cash flow driver and to assign a goal.
Management of these numbers is done one of three ways: through the monthly or quarterly budget; through the monthly or quarterly P&L statement; and finally, some of these numbers go into the executive level scorecard, which is monitored weekly.
The 8 Questions™
What are your Core Values?
What is your Core Focus?
What is your 10-year target?
What is your (high level) marketing strategy?
What is your 3-year picture?
What is your 1-year plan?
What are your Rocks (quarterly priorities)?
What are the issues getting in the way of achieving all of this?
The Assistance Track™
Leaders are not meant to be doing administrative tasks and getting caught up in details. They need support and assistance in order to free up their brain power and time to do things that will have a larger impact on the business. The Assistance Track provides five easy disciplines to help you delegate and elevate to your true skill set.
The EOS Foundational Tools™
These are the 5 Tools that help entrepreneurs align their leadership teams turn businesses into great companies. This includes: Vision / Traction Organizer™, Accountability Chart, Rocks, L10 Meetings™, Scorecard
The V/TO™
The Vision/Traction Organizer™ (V/TO) helps you simplify the strategic planning process, getting your vision out of your head and written down by answering eight questions to crystallize where your organization is going and how you will get there. Everything fits neatly into 2 pages instead of 50.
The Accountability Chart
Most organizations have an Organization Chart, but an Accountability Chart is so much more. It is not just a persons name and their job title/description. The Accountability Chart defines specific roles and responsibilities that are clear agreements to what the employee will do, as opposed to expectations you set, but they know nothing about. Accountability Charts are built without people in mind, but understanding what the organization needs, and then filling people into the proper "seats."
You can build an Accountability Chart in Ninety, and in the software, measurables are tied to Accountability Chart seats so from the top to the bottom or the organization, everyone knows what their goals are and if they are hitting them.
Rocks
Rocks are the 90 day objectives that you are looking to accomplish so that your organization can hit its yearly goals. When everything is important, nothing is important. The process of setting Rocks enables you to align around the three to seven most important priorities that must get done every 90 days.
Another way of looking at is is a Rock is a priority that will take more than 14 days and must get done this quarter. In general, the company and each person should only have three to seven. Less is more.
The Level 10 Meeting™
The Level 10 Meeting™ was designed to eliminate meetings that don’t resolve problems and waste your time. The L10 Meeting follows an agenda that incorporates the psychology of what makes for great weekly meetings, forcing you to look at and address what is most important, solving your issues as they arise. You spend time checking in with each team member (personally and professionally), going through your scorecard, giving an update on rocks, announcing headlines, checking on to-do's, and finally solving issues.
Ninety incorporates a Meeting Mode so you can run through each of your agenda items to see exactly what your team has been working on.
The EOS Scorecard™
Weekly and/or monthly measurables that are forward looking, activity based numbers, with weekly/monthly goals, make up your team's scorecard. Each team/department in your organization can have a scorecard, and the numbers you choose to measure should affect your future goals/projections. Your 8 Cash Flow Drivers™ should be considered while determining what numbers belong on your scorecard.
The Five Leadership Abilities™
1. SIMPLIFY - eliminate complexity and reduce everything until you are only left with what is essential.
2. DELEGATE - free yourself to do what you do best, and do the same for every person in your organization.
3. PREDICT - plan and choose the right path. This means in the long term and short term.
4. SYSTEMIZE - document and get everyone to follow your company's core processes.
5. STRUCTURE - define and organize the positions in your organization to reduce complexity. Create an Accountability Chart (Ninety allows you to build one in the software) to increase clarity, communication and accountability.
By executing on these 5 Leadership Abilities, you can become a more competent, well-rounded leader. Your team will want to help your business grow from the bottom of your organization to the top.
Issues
An Issue is an unresolved problem, idea, or opportunity. It can be classified into two categories: long-term and short-term. A long-term issue does not have to be solved this quarter. It can be put on the V/TO so it is written down to be addressed at your Quarterly. Some refer to this as their "parking lot issues list" and it is an important practice to get issues out of your consciousness to help free up your mind. A short-term issue must get solved this quarter and is put it on your Level 10 meeting issues list.
The Issues Solving Track™
Teams can spend too much time over-discussing the issues, preventing any actual solution. Issues can linger for days, weeks, months – even years. The Issues Solving Track is a discipline that will enable any team to solve problems quickly in order of priority through the practice of adding issues to your L10 Issues list, and pushing anything that should/could not be solved in the current quarter to the Long-Term Issues List.
The Meeting Pulse™
The Meeting Pulse™ helps you eliminate inconsistency and inefficiency. It gives leadership teams an objective to meet quarterly for a full day and every week for 90 minutes, enabling them to stay focused, stay on the same page, and solve problems.
The People Analyzer™
Evaluating people is a difficult and subjective task. With the People Analyzer, you will be able to cut through the complexity and clearly identify if someone fits in your culture and is filling the right seat.
The Quarterly Conversation™
It is not a performance review. It should not be tied to any compensation or raise. The idea is to get together, ideally outside of the office, to have a one-hour conversation about what’s working and what’s not. Just simply start the conversation by asking the question “What is working and what’s not?” You both share your answers, it is a two-way discussion.
To-Do
A To-Do is anything anyone commits to on the leadership team that must get done in the next seven days (worst case 14 days). Always track your to-dos on your Level 10 meeting agenda and confirm they are completed in the following week’s meeting. If they are not complete, consider moving that to-do to the issues list to discuss any barriers.
Traction®
Instilling focus, discipline, and accountability throughout the company so that everyone executes on that vision—every day.