Any company using EOS to achieve Vision, Traction, and Healthy in their business knows that part of that journey is discovering the Core Values that define your culture and then hiring, recognizing, rewarding, celebrating, and occasionally terminating people based on whether they live your Core Values or not.
In almost all small businesses, owners have dual roles in their companies. Sometimes many more. This can be problematic. It’s like the kid who owned the basketball in a pickup game who, if they didn’t get their way, could always resort to “it’s my ball and if we don’t do it my way I am going home.”
This blog post was prompted by a December 2015 blog post from Seth Godin that I tucked away for inspiration, called, "Is it too little butter, or too much bread?" Here is the gist. When is the last time you complained about having too many resources in your business? Too many engineers, too many clients, too much revenue?
Let me guess. The answer is probably never. It is always the opposite. The engineering plan for this year to too expansive – we don’t have enough...fill in the blank – time, money, people. And so on.
It appears as if Greg McKeown has written a book for business owners and leaders who run their business on EOS – the Entrepreneurial Operating System. One of the basic tenants of EOS is that less is more, that you have to go slow to go fast. Focus, focus, focus. Single point accountability. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less meshes perfectly with these concepts.
Seth Godin wrote a blog post a while back called "The Illusion of Control." You can read the whole post here. The gist is that we need to come to grips with the reality that we actually have no control over the outcomes of our actions. In fact, all we are in control of are the actions themselves. We can only influence the outcomes.
This is particularly frustrating for successful business owners who are scaling their organizations. Making the change from doing everything to merely influencing everything is difficult. Some can’t cross that bridge ever, and hopefully can be at peace with whatever size business they can manage to sustain by being a "genius with a thousand helpers."
