A couple of weeks ago, I had a morning appointment with a business owner, and an afternoon appointment with another executive (from a different company). The two meetings couldn’t have been more different. One was excited about her future, knew where she wanted to go and was asking… what if we need to hire more people, where will they sit? What if we have so many orders we can’t fulfill them on time? We proceeded to make plans for these situations and put the plans into action!

George Perles, assistant coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1972 to 1982, delivered a powerful message years ago. He shared a mantra from their heyday in the 1970s: “We made every decision like we were going to the Super Bowl.” Their organization made these decisions long before they reached their goal—and they ended up winning the Super Bowl four times.

There is a great book called the One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey by Kenneth Blanchard, Hal Burrows, and William Oncken. In this book, they explain their philosophy that managers should not take on problems (monkeys) that are not theirs. When managers take on other’s monkeys, they end up becoming the hopeless bottleneck for the company.

If resolving business problems is making your leadership team discouraged, you’re not alone. Some of my entrepreneurial leadership teams hit an emotional wall after their first year of implementing EOS—especially if they need to resolve many large organizational issues in the company. Even when they make significant progress in the first year, they still feel unsatisfied and a bit discouraged. Why?