EOS® FAQ's

Do you have questions about implementing EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System®) in your business? Here’s some real answers directly from experienced EOS Implementers™.

EOS® AS A SYSTEM

Q: WHY DOES MY COMPANY NEED AN OPERATING SYSTEM?
Every business already has an “operating system”. In many small companies, the entrepreneur or owner or president runs everything with a tight control. The business lives or dies based on the owner’s individual ability to run everything. The owner or CEO is immersed in the daily grind of the business – in operations, processes, managing people, finance, and about 99 other daily issues that come up. And that’s OK if you run a small shop with a few employees, or you want to run a lifestyle business.

Once a company grows beyond 10 employees, the need for a true operating system becomes apparent, as doing it all yourself and holding it together becomes increasingly difficult. An effective operating system will help you define your vision, including your core values and focus, your long term plans and goals, and your strategy. The system will most importantly determine the right people, who are in the right seats. The system will simplify your processes, determine your key metrics, create an environment where issues are addressed and solved weekly, and everyone in the organization has a strong sense of accountability towards the shared vision. A great operating system helps the business run without the owner.

Q: WHAT ARE SOME EXCELLENT BUSINESS OPERATING SYSTEMS?
More and more, businesses are borrowing methodologies from books like The E-Myth Revisited®, 4 Disciplines of Execution®, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits®, and Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business®. Traction is the book that is based on EOS®, the Entrepreneurial Operating System®. Honestly, there’s some very strong similarities between each of these. Why? Because they are timeless, proven methods that if used effectively, can dramatically improve a business.
Q: WHAT IS EOS®?
EOS® stands for the Entrepreneurial Operating System®, developed by best selling author and business guru Gino Wickman. Wickman describes EOS® as a “set of timeless business principles and real-world tools that help entrepreneurs get what they want from their businesses.”

By mastering this simple “way of operating,” leadership teams of growth-oriented companies systematically and progressively improve. EOS® includes tools that have been used over 40,000 times in the past fifteen years or so. If implemented correctly and consistently, companies will achieve more growth and profit, all the while delivering a better life balance to company owners and leaders.

Q: CAN EOS® GIVE MY BUSINESS “TRACTION”?

That’s a great question, and the answer is “it depends”. Identifying whether EOS® is right for your business involves a few inexpensive steps:

  1. Read the first few chapters of Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business. For free, you can download the first chapter here. If you want to read more, buy the whole book from us at a 50% discount – it’s worth it!
  2. Take the Organizational Checkup™ at www.eosworldwide.com, an easy three minute self-test to gauge your organization’s strengths and weaknesses.
  3. Schedule a 15-30 minute phone call to chat with us about it. A phone conversation is free, and you might decide to invite one of us in to talk with you or your leadership team. That’s also free. We’ll even give you a set of the tools. A quick note: even though these conversations are free, please know that our intent is not to use this time to sell you on us. Sometimes, the timing is wrong or the fit isn’t there.
  4.  

The rest is just implementation. There is nothing more to buy.

Q: WHY SHOULD MY COMPANY USE EOS® OVER OTHER SYSTEMS?
These are all excellent systems, and each has proven its worth. We ought to know – at separate times, our businesses have implemented The E Myth®, the Rockefeller Habits® and the EOS® models.

EOS® simply stuck with us because it took the best parts from the others, is simple to follow, and infused our team with a real sense of accountability that some of the others didn’t seem to have.

Q: IS EOS® A NEW CONCEPT?
No. The EOS Process™ as its own has been implemented in tens of thousands of small companies over the past fifteen years or so. The main and fair criticism of EOS® is this: Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business repackages concepts that have been around for decades. In fact, the author Gino Wickman readily admits the influences of other systems. Additionally, he tells of borrowing many concepts from Jim Collins (author of bestsellers Good to Great and Built to Last), and Patrick Lencioni (author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team).

Having said that…here’s how it’s different: Traction® has presented these proven concepts in a way that is simpler for smaller companies to understand and apply. So while other systems are more complex, EOS’ simplicity is an important reason in the explosion of companies adopting EOS®.

COMPANIES THAT IMPLEMENT EOS

Q: WHAT SIZE COMPANIES ARE BEST SUITED FOR IMPLEMENTING EOS?
Typically, companies best suited for EOS are those with $2M -$50M of revenue, headquartered in one location, with a staff of more than 10 staff but less than 250, with a leadership team of 3-7, open-minded and wanting to help their organization reach its full potential. Sorry, those last two qualifiers were not ‘size’ related, but those two bonus qualifiers are critical.
Q: MY COMPANY IS A STARTUP. IS EOS RIGHT FOR MY TEAM?
If you are like most startups, probably not just yet.

Startups are busy figuring out everything.  As described by the Harvard Business Review in the Five Stages of Small Business Growth, you are most likely in Stage 1 (the Creative stage) or maybe Stage 2 (the Survival stage). You’re setting up operations, testing what works with the product or service, trying everything in marketing and branding, figuring out pricing models.  Meanwhile you’re doing it all on a shoestring budget while also spending 60-70 hours a week running from role to role (or attempting to multitask) as you try to afford more staff.  It’s an exciting time.  But time is not what you have and you probably don’t have a ‘leadership team” structure yet.

EOS is meant for late Stage 2 (now ready to move to Stage 3), and Stage 3 companies (Success stage). These are companies who have ‘survived’ but now have hit a plateau of some kind (or have been in a decline after past successes).

If you are Stage 2 or higher and are considering implementing EOS, let’s schedule a call.

Q: WHAT ISSUES ARE COMPANIES EXPERIENCING THAT THEY SHOULD CONSIDER USING EOS?
We work with business leadership teams to solve common problems that they are experiencing, like:

  1. Having a vision that either isn’t shared, or worse, not being followed by the team.  This is indicated but lack of trust, low morale, turnover, and ‘silos’ within the business.
  2. Being frustrated that the same issues keep coming up.  They’re fighting fires over and over again, day after day.
  3. Generally “feeling stuck” in the daily grind. They rarely get a chance to work on (instead of in) the business and progress is incremental at best.
  4. Finally, we find that the main leaders are discouraged that the business, even if it is IS doing well outwardly, is making them a mess or unhappy. They just are getting tired of it.

Is your company experiencing similar issues? Consider scheduling a call.

Q: IF OUR COMPANY IMPLEMENTS EOS, WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN?
You should experience significant improvements, some almost immediately within the first few months, and then marked changes over time a few years. It’s a proven system and it is ‘simple’, but not easy.  But done right, you will see impact via:

  • A shared vision. It will be clear to the team what you want to be as a company and how to get there.
  • The right people doing the right things in the right ways.  This will show in higher morale, lower turnover, improved productivity, and dramatically improved efficiencies.
  • An improved bottom line.
  • The owner finally getting (and getting to do!) what they want.
Q: DO I NEED A LEADERSHIP TEAM TO EFFECTIVELY USE EOS?
Yes, absolutely.  The system is made for leadership teams, not for individual leaders,  So if you are a solopreneur or have a very flat structure/team (one leader with many ‘assistants’), then EOS is not right for you.  The most impact from EOS will come when you have a leadership team of 3-7 actual leaders.
Q: BUT WHAT IF I WANT TO GET THOSE ‘ASSISTANTS’ TO BECOME LEADERS?
If you are ready to promote them to actual leadership roles… then yes, EOS is a great system for rolling that out.  There is power in having people on your team who can grow into the right leadership seat, understand the vision, have the tools to achieving that vision, and are truly empowered to lead, manage, and help other staff to be accountable.  The good news is that EOS puts team structure as the primary tool to start implementing EOS, right away in what we call the Focus Day.  Read more about the EOS Process here.

FINDING AN EOS IMPLEMENTER

Q: HOW MUCH DOES EOS® COST TO IMPLEMENT?

(AKA: what is the investment needed to implement EOS ®?)

There are two options:

  1. Go it alone and do it yourself.

    You can buy the book: Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, then try to implement it yourself in order to save some money,   The person who will run the meetings should know the book well, understand and be able to use the concepts, keep the team organized, facilitate the meeting, elicit honest and open responses, be able to guide to the team to solve real issues and drive towards goals, and be able to hold the team accountable to staying on track and getting things done.

    If you have all of that, one caution: you’ll be ‘practicing’ on yourselves, and learning and facilitating the process while being a ‘part of the room’.  It may be a lot of trial and error on your company and leadership team’s dime.  Some do find success this way, although over 70% of our clients have attempted to ‘self-implement” EOS for up to two years before we were engaged to work with them.  Yet, it is possible.

  2. Hire an EOS Implementer™ (a coach trained specifically to help you implement EOS®). Most companies who have successfully implemented EOS have had some help.  These people are called EOS Implementers™.  There are three designations:  Professional, Certified, and Expert. EOS does a good job of showing the differences (minus the fee structure), here.

    Expect to invest between $20,000 and $45,000 per year for two years.  You will pay less for Professionals and most for Experts. Each charges by session days, each is guaranteed (literally don’t pay for the session if it’s not worth it!), and there is no contract.

    In any case, sure that the Implementer is the right fit for your team, and don’t let pricing or level of certification be your only point of decision. Consider interviewing a few implementers.

Contact us if you’d like to have a 15 minute conversation.

Q: IF I HIRE AN EOS IMPLEMENTER™, HOW LONG ARE THEY WORKING WITH MY BUSINESS?
Typically, an EOS Implementer™ facilitates client sessions for two years. Plus, the EOS model™ works in that you should typically see an implementer between 5-7 days a year. In the time you are working with us over that two years, you may see one of us for up to 12 total session days. Our job is to teach you the EOS Process™, give you the practical tools you need to run the system, facilitate the sessions, help you to be accountable to your goals, your team and your priorities… and then get out of your way.

Our goal is never to work ourself deeper into your company. In fact, our main goal is to work ourselves out of a job. If we wanted a job within your company, we’d have filled out an application.

Q: CAN WE KEEP THE IMPLEMENTER ON AS A FACILITATOR PAST TWO YEARS?
Absolutely.  Many clients ‘demand’ that we facilitate their quarterly and annual sessions way past the two year mark. But we’ll keep asking, and when the time is right, you’ll know and can make that decision.
Q: DOES THE IMPLEMENTER NEED TO BE BASED LOCALLY NEAR MY COMPANY?
Not at all.  The implementer is not in your business on a regular basis (those people are often called ‘consultants’), but only 5-6 days a year.  They can travel to you (or wherever you want to meet)  However, some implementers do have a preference to staying within a certain range of their home.

Of course, the benefit of hiring a local implementer is the lack of travel fees, so you may factor that into the equation.

For us, while we are based in New York State, and while we’ve travelled all across the United States to help clients, our preference is to serve clients on the eastern half of the United States, and the East Coast (Maine to Florida). Flights are shorter and cheap!

Talk with us about implementing EOS within your business.

Q: CAN I FIRE THE IMPLEMENTER IF HE OR SHE IS NOT A FIT FOR US?
We firmly believe that if we’re not adding value to your company, then we’re just adding cost. Whenever you want to stop using us, there’s no contract to break. Simply don’t have us back.

Plus, we literally guarantee the sessions…even the one you may have just finished.  See the guarantee here.

Q: DOES THE IMPLEMENTER NEED TO HAVE A BACKGROUND IN OUR INDUSTRY?
No.  EOS implementers are not subject-matter consultants, looking to show you best practices on how to operate within your industry. We have found that over tens of thousands of companies, the sole job of the implementer is to train, coach and facilitate the leadership team in following the proven EOS process. Remember, the subject matter experts are in the room – you!

Having said that, we happen to have helped businesses across many industries, from service, to professional, to distribution, to manufacturing, health and wellness, insurance, software, and so many more.  We’ve touched dozens of industries.

STARTING THE PROCESS AND ROLLING OUT EOS

Q: WHAT IS THE PROCESS TO BE ABLE TO QUICKLY AND EFFECTIVELY ROLLOUT EOS INTO OUR COMPANY?
There is a proven process for rolling out EOS. See the EOS Process here.
Q: DO WE NEED TO START THE PROCESS AT THE BEGINNING OF OUR FISCAL YEAR?
No.  About half of our EOS clients start the process mid-year, or some other time than their fiscal year beginning.  The whole point is just to get started.

Considering getting started?  Give us a shout.

Q: DO WE NEED TO HOLD SESSIONS OFFSITE OR CAN WE MEET AT OUR OFFICES?
It is typically recommended that you hold meetings offsite, so that you can disengage from the day-to-day business and the distractions of interruptions by your remaining staff.  We do have a few clients who have the meeting at their office conference room, but those rooms are big and comfortable, and our clients are vigilant in keeping to the schedule and telling the other staff “we’re not here”. If that feels like you, remember that the conference room should also be somewhat soundproof. In either case, a good whiteboard and/or easels are critical.
Q: CAN WE MEET VIRTUALLY?

This is tricky.  For the most part, we still recommend in-person sessions.  They are distraction-free, you get to disengage from the day-to-day, and you are open and honest with each other, with all the communication that body language brings,  in order to develop and work together towards solving big challenges and moving towards your future goals.  There are too many distractions while sitting in front of your computer. Having said that, we have had very successful virtual meetings for the teams that thrive virtually.   Talk to us about your situation and we’ll figure it out together.

Q: CAN WE MEET VIRTUALLY?

This is not recommended (at least during normal times – in a pandemic, it’s still important to meet, but virtually might be a requirement). While regular weekly virtual meetings are fine, meeting virtually is not conducive to a great full day meeting.  EOS sessions are digital-free, you get to disengage from the day-to-day, and you are open and honest with each other while trying to develop and work together towards solving big challenges and moving towards your future goals.  There are too many distractions while sitting in front of your computer. Don’t do it.

Q: FOR ANNUAL PLANNING, SHOULD WE MEET BEFORE THE END OF A YEAR FOR THE FOLLOWING YEAR’S PLANNING, OR AFTER THE YEAR IS OVER?
Great question. It’s up to you.  About 50% of our clients over time have found meeting before year end helps them get the next year rolling sooner, while the other 50% want to focus on completing the current year before setting new goals and strategies.
Q: WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT EOS®?
  1. Read more about EOS (and implementing it) in a quick summary here.
  2. Get a chapter of Traction for free by clicking here.
  3. If you want to continue to read it, either buy the book in any format here: Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business  or buy one physical book from us at 50% off here,
  4. Contact us to schedule a quick 15-30 minute conversation with one of our EOS implementers™. We’ll be glad to talk with you about your specific situation. Maybe there’s a fit for EOS® – or maybe there isn’t. If you decide that it makes sense to invite us into a deeper 90 Minute Meeting with your leadership team, we can schedule that, too.

We’re not always a fit for everyone we talk to, and it doesn’t hurt our feelings if you choose a different option. We’re just here to help.

Wait, you've got more questions?

That’s OK, we can take them.