During the check-in portion of a recent quarterly session with a client, several team members mentioned that their Marketing Strategy was “not working”. When I dug a little deeper during the V/TO review, everyone agreed that the Marketing Strategy was correct - they just weren’t sure what to do now that their 3 Uniques™ were defined.

How does a company successfully transition from one generation to the next? For many teams, just the term “succession planning” can be overwhelming. All the details of buying/selling and ownership transition are daunting, but beyond all that is one question plaguing business owners: "Even if we had all the legal details worked out, how does my business practically transition to the new ownership so that I can step away?"

Here’s the story of one team that successfully transitioned to new ownership within the EOS Process™.

A few years ago, one of my clients was planning to step down as CEO within a couple of years and wanted to appoint his successor from inside the company. What made this tricky was that there wasn't a single, obvious candidate. Recognizing that whomever he chose would need some time to grow into the role, he wanted to get an early start. The first step was finding out who was interested and how the rest of the team felt about them.

Rather than bury this issue in a series of secretive one-on-one conversations, he asked his team a simple question: “Who among you is interested in becoming our next CEO?” Three hands went up. What happened next was remarkable.

Every entrepreneurial company, regardless of size, never has enough people, money and time to accomplish all the goals its leaders can envision for it. It's the nature of the beast.

Given that resources are always deficient in some way, it's imperative to remember that perfect is the enemy of done. EOS^® employs the 20/80 rule throughout the system. Focus on accomplishing the 20% that will help you achieve 80% of the result.

When helping an entrepreneurial leadership team clarify, simplify, and achieve its Vision, we use a tool called the V/TO™ (Vision/Traction Organizer™). This EOS Foundational Tool™ contains eight questions, and our job as EOS Implementers™ is to get every member of the leadership team to agree on every word of the answers to each of those questions.

When there’s weakness in the Vision component of your organization, it’s not that there’s no Vision. Often there’s too much Vision – you don’t all agree.