The key ideas

Traction

Gino Wickman, 2011

Your company has grown, yet you work more and more and understand less and less of what goes on in it? Gino Wickman has sat down at the table with leadership teams hundreds of times and built that experience into a simple system, EOS. The book shows the six foundations of any business and gives a clear tool for each: from a vision on two pages to a 90-minute weekly meeting.

Who it is for

For owners and leaders of small companies where everything rests on them and growth has hit a ceiling. And for anyone building a team who wants the agreements in it to be kept.

You are not your business. Your business is an entity in and of itself.

The owner who fell asleep in meetings

One company owner worked eighty hours a week and kept every detail in his own hands. His leadership team existed only for show: he still made every decision himself. He was so worn out that he began falling asleep right in meetings.

One day he admitted to Gino Wickman that he did not want to live like this anymore. Wickman has spent more than 1,300 working days with the leadership teams of growing companies and built that experience into EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. Two years later that owner had a real team, more time for his family and, according to the author, record profits.

In Wickman's view, every company has six foundations, and he calls them the Six Key Components. They are vision, people, data, issues, process and traction, the grip of the wheel on the road: the ability to turn plans into things done.

Ahead: why growth hits a ceiling, whom to put in which seat and how to run meetings that make issues go away. Let's start with what the owner will have to let go of.

To grow, you'll have to let go of the vine

An entrepreneur slips off the edge of a cliff and manages to grab onto a vine. For the first time in his life he prays: “Is anybody up there?” A voice from the clouds asks: “Do you believe?” “Yes.” “Then let go of the vine.” The entrepreneur thinks it over and asks: “Is there anybody else up there?”

In the author's view, many owners behave this way: they want growth but hold on to everything they have already built. Yet companies grow in spurts, from ceiling to ceiling, and hitting the ceiling is inevitable. One person can make only so many decisions, so a company where the owner decides everything stops where his strength runs out.

The author calls the first step delegate and elevate. Hand others what you have already outgrown: sorting the mail, approving invoices, customer complaints. You can't be the chef, the head waiter and the dishwasher all at once.

The second step is to get the way the work is done out of your head. According to Wickman, a company has about seven core processes on average, from hiring people to keeping customers. They are worth naming the same way for everyone and writing down briefly. His 20/80 rule: document only the 20 percent of steps that produce 80 percent of the result. Taken together, this is what the author calls the Company Way.

There will also be steps nobody can explain. Wickman tells of a woman who always cut the end off a ham before baking it, because that was how her mother did it. It was the grandmother who explained: long ago the baking pan had been too small.

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About the author

Gino Wickman is an American entrepreneur, the creator of the EOS system and the founder of EOS Worldwide. He has been in business since he was 21: he pulled his family's company out of a crisis and sold it, then began helping leadership teams put his system to work.

All books by this author: Gino Wickman

Terms from the book

  • John
  • Smith
  • Traction
  • Bethlehem Steel
  • Carnegie
  • EOS: The Entrepreneurial Operating System. The system for running a company that the author created: six foundations of a business and simple tools for each.
  • Six Key Components: The author's term for a company's six foundations: vision, people, data, issues, process and traction. In his view, every business rests on them.
  • Delegate and elevate: The author's principle: hand others the tasks you have outgrown and turn to what you do best.
  • 20/80 rule: The author's advice to document processes briefly: only the 20 percent of steps that produce 80 percent of the result.
  • Company Way: In the book, the Way: a company's core processes, named the same for everyone, written down briefly and gathered into one document.
  • Escobar: Ed Escobar, the author's former business partner. Together with the author and his father he owned a company that trained real estate agents in sales.
  • V/TO: The Vision/Traction Organizer, the first EOS tool. A two-page form where the company's vision comes down to answers to eight questions.
  • Core focus: The author's term: the reason the company exists and its niche. It serves as a filter for new ideas and opportunities.
  • Broder: Rich Broder, co-owner of Broder & Sachse, a company that owns and manages real estate.
  • Sachse: Todd Sachse, co-owner of Broder & Sachse and of the construction firm Sachse Construction, a client of the author.
  • Broder & Sachse: An American company that owns and manages real estate. Its co-owners worked with the author on the EOS system.
  • Core values: A company's few main principles, usually three to seven. In the author's view, they are what people are hired, reviewed, rewarded and fired by.
  • People Analyzer: An EOS tool: a chart where each employee is rated on the core values with a plus, a plus-minus or a minus. The author's father came up with the first version in the early 1970s to assess salespeople.
  • Three-strike rule: A procedure from the book: talk the problem over with the employee twice, giving 30 days to fix it each time, and if nothing changes, part ways.
  • Niche Retail: An American online store that Tyler Smith and a partner grew to almost 19 million dollars in revenue over nine years.
  • 36 hours of pain: Tyler Smith's phrase, now part of EOS: after a hard parting with an employee the pain lasts about a day and a half, while a decision put off torments you for months.
  • Visionary: A role in the EOS Accountability Chart: usually the owner or founder, the person of ideas, big relationships and company culture.
  • Integrator: A role in the EOS Accountability Chart: the person who runs the company day to day, answers for profit and ties its major functions together.
  • Accountability Chart: An EOS tool. It looks like an org chart, but each function lists its five main responsibilities and carries only one name.
  • GWC: Get it, want it, capacity to do it. The author's filter for checking whether a seat fits a person.
  • Schwab: Charles Schwab, an American industrialist who ran the steel company Bethlehem Steel in the early 20th century.
  • Scorecard: The EOS weekly chart with five to fifteen numbers about the company's activities. It shows whether the week is going to plan.
  • IDS: Identify, Discuss, Solve. The three steps EOS uses to solve any issue.
  • Tangent Alert: A friendly phrase that, as the author advises, brings a discussion back on topic.
  • 90-Day World: The author's term: a company working in quarters, with the team checking the vision and setting new priorities every 90 days.
  • Rocks: In EOS, the three to seven most important priorities of a company or a person for the next 90 days, each with one owner.
  • Level 10 Meeting: The EOS weekly meeting of the leadership team: 90 minutes on one agenda, an hour of it spent solving issues. The name points to a meeting worth rating 10 out of 10.

All terms

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