Build a Self-Running Business with EOS - Entrepreneur and Implementer Explains

Okay, Shane, so you've got a fantastic pizza restaurant, and I don't even think that's your only business, but you've actually got businesses that run without you successfully. And you are an EOS implement or helping other companies get the same benefits. I'd love to hear a little bit about your journey, how that's working for you. It's a unique thing, right? An actual practicing entrepreneur, if that's the right word. Plus practicing.

There you go. Yeah. So it wouldn't be possible if we weren't running on EOs. I'll just start there. There's no better way to say that. So I'll take you back before I take you forward. We started implementing EOs in 2014 with Mark Winters. And that was after this journey of having one restaurant that was a super successful home run, opening up a second restaurant, super successful home run, a third restaurant, not a super successful home run restaurant. And for us, we just were grasping, trying to figure out which way was up. And we were using culture index at the time, behavior trait, personality assessment, so that helped. But it wasn't a full turnkey thing until we found eos. And that's where it really helped us get solid on the six key components of our business. We first attempted to implement independently self implementation. And for us, thankfully, that failed very quickly and we realized we were in need of some professional help to help us steward our journey. And we found Mark Winters, thankfully in Dallas Fort Worth. And Mark did a masterful job of.

For people that don't know if I can throw in the book Rocket Fuel, which I think is at least when I first started reading this back in mid 20 teens. That was the second book in the series, either second or third. And Mark co authored that with Gino Wickman. And it's all about the visionary integrator relationship. So pretty neat that you guys that was your implementer.

Yeah. And the book hadn't come out yet and it was pretty amazing when it did because we needed Clarion, the visionary integrator roles. And he helped us masterfully get there. And I would tell people he helped us by holding up the EOS mirror on our leadership team. And the realities and deficiencies were made known pretty quickly. First day before lunch, we're having real talk conversation about who's going to sit in which seat and what structure we needed. And for us it was so clarifying and it gave words to things that we were thinking and feeling but not able to fully express in a non incendiary way. And so the framework and his Facilitation just helped us get to where we needed to go. Fast forward and I'm fast forwarding through a lot of stuff, right. So we turned off the restaurant that wasn't working for us. Ultimately, after a few years, I sold the second restaurant, the first one. We've amplified that in the market and we now have three locations with one with a commissary kitchen to support our restaurant operations. I've bought into another concept and we modeled that on running on EOs and we've amplified that into two locations. We've got a third that's opening up in the spring of 26 and we might even have a fourth that's opening up in the spring of 26 pretty rapidly. I'm negotiating that deal right now, but that's where I spend about 5% of my time. 95% of my time is EOS implementation with black clients, helping them on their journey.

That is interesting to me in particular right now because I've got clients through, not through Matt, but we both know Matt Rosen as how we met. And this is one of this particular client is how I know Matt. They're doing something that sounds similar to what you're doing, which is they decided to commit to EOS very early, like earlier than I would usually even recommend it. Unless I find that people who are not first time entrepreneurs. Right. So it's not your first rodeo and you get the value. Those are the people I think benefit the most from doing it from day one. Because I don't, I've got different theories on it, but I just know that that's one of the, one of the success factors I see for people adopting it like day one versus getting to that 2 million or 3 million mark. But I think that I'm seeing a lot more data on that. It can be done and has been done. Like we're. They're a customer of ours, they're doing great. But sounds like you're like step one after you start the concept or invest in it is now we're going to install the system. At least that's what I'm sounds like what I'm hearing.

Oh, absolutely. It is a part. It is our business framework. If we're going to operate a business, what's the simplest, clearest way to do that with the life and on where we're going to go, how we're going to get there, who's going to do what, making sure we have the right meeting cadence. All the things that we talk about in the EOS implementation process as we strengthen the six key components of the business. I've got a client, I've been working with them for about four and a half years. They're not with me because they don't understand EOs. They just, they're with me because of the facilitation. They can sit in their seats, they get to own their seats in the session room and they can session masterpoint facilitated where they optimize their time. They, to your point, started implementation. These are two Goldman Sachs guys that left Goldman Sachs. They had thing that they wanted to go do. They knew exactly what they wanted to do, but they had never started their own business. And they didn't want to try to figure out a business framework to operate their business. They wanted to focus on the thing. Now that's an uncommon thought in early stage entrepreneurial thinking. It is often, let's just go do the thing and we'll figure it out along the way. But these guys, because they started with me before they got their first letter of intent signed in a real estate investment and development company, that's a big deal. They have no revenue coming in and they're hiring me. But within 18 months they have $1.5 billion of assets under management. Okay. And they've grown their team strategically in a healthy way. But it's all because they started implementing eos early on and they didn't have to figure out and make the mistakes that are often made along the journey.

I've been both in Fortune 100 companies helping them optimize operations and I've done it for scrappy, profitable startups that bootstrap. And so my caution to people is often, hey, you need, there's certain things you need like you may need a little faster cycle early on with your rocks or they're. I'm not saying it's not a recommendation, everybody. My point is I've been vocal. Sometimes, hey, you've got to also recognize where you are in the process and what you're ready for on the one hand. But on the other hand, my what I'm seeing because this customer of ours, they're in their first year, they're going to hit 1.6, close to 2 million in one year. And they're some of that's a testament to their relationships and their business acumen for sure. But what you gain, it seems to me, it's like I always wear black. I don't want to think about what I'm wearing in the morning. There's tons of data on decision fatigue. It's a thing that happens. Like, I don't want to spend my precious energy thinking about what I wear. I don't want to spend my precious energy thinking about the processes, the base processes that run my business. And I think there's a big lift you get when you just go, here are our high level SOPs, our core SOPs, really. And I know I'm not necessarily using the same language, but just for people that aren't familiar with EOS just says, look, you're not going to go apply all your creativity and your decision calories to figuring out how to run a business. You focus that on serving your customers and your market and doing the heavy lifts when you need to make a management decision. And as we're talking, that's what I think EOS really gives it. Obviously it gives you that at later stages, but I see too many companies try to reinvent the wheel there because it's fun and engaging, but it's not profitable to do it.

There's.

I don't. How do we innovate for our customers? How do we innovate in our product? That's where to put your focus, not how do we innovate in a business operating system?

Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right.

Yeah. Super interesting that. I don't know that I've ever articulated it that way in my head before. This discussion definitely brings that to bear. There's a few things we talked about a little bit before the podcast. There are tools that are, quote, unquote, lower in the toolbox. They literally appear lower and they're a little bit less talked about because they tend to come in once you have the others in place. At least from what I've seen. Things like, even though I think the cash flow drivers ought to be front and center pretty quickly, people analyzer, obviously that gets a lot of attention. GWC. But I think the 555 is quarterly conversations now.

That's right. We rebranded that tool to be more intuitive so that people think about the right things.

Yeah. And so it's. It takes the place of a performance review really, doesn't it?

Yeah, it's a conversation to make sure we're aligned and to make sure that the most essential things are happening in the way that they should. And the ideal timing on the quarterly conversation is really mid quarter, mid quarter, between the date that you set your rocks and the date the rocks are due, as much as you can push that to the middle of that quarter, then you're going to probably get some of the most bang for your buck. Because it's a real serious check in outside of just the weekly cadence or whatever cadence On a level 10, depending on who's attending the level 10, the leadership team or departmental. But it's a cadence of communication that we strongly encourage that helps managers and managees be on the same page with the most essential things about how that individual is performing, performing, how they're showing up, are there measurables on track. And you really want to do a rock check in as well and make sure that nothing that's materially important is getting stuck. And it's really just intended to be an alignment conversation, which is why we call it a quarterly conversation and not a performance review. Because that's not intended to be about money at all. There should be something else, some other process in place that addresses that money is coming up. That probably means there's a separate process that isn't in place that should be to provide that level of clarity. This is really just intended to be an alignment conversation and it's not just for the managee, it's also for the manager, meaning you probably want to get a little bit of feedback from that very important person that you're managing on how you're doing as a manager. So it's a conversation.

Nice. The other one that comes up that I think is really important and maybe not as well understood are trust builders. Because those to me are. Stephen Covey used to talk about Stephen Covey, the elder making deposits in the emotional bank account. And then Nick Saban and Steve Sarkeesian who are coaches I really admire. Talk about trust being about time plus consistency. Right. That's where you get trust. Can you talk a little bit about the eos? Trust builders?

Yeah. So we think about trust very much through the lens of anything Patrick Lencioni. So four obsessions of an extraordinary executive. Five dysfunctions of a team. He's got other books, but those are books.

Yeah.

We cheaply think about when we're talking about anything related to trust on a team. And there's a concept in the five dysfunctions of a team that Lencioni articulates the triangle and it's at the base is trust. And then you have conflict. I'm talking about the five rungs in the triangle. Trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and then results at the top. We talk about this trust builders. We actually. It's a part of our process and we pick it up during the annual planning. So typically as a part of the EOS proven process, the way that we implement after we get through your Focus Day Vision Building Day one, Vision Building Day two, where we gain mastery of the leadership team and the five foundational tools, which are the vto, the Vision Traction Organizer, the Accountability Chart Rocks Meeting Ball Scorecard. With those five tools in place as a foundation, then we can start layering other tools on top of that. Okay. In the pulsing that we do on a quarterly basis throughout the year, we're going to spend about an hour of our time each session teaching a new EOS tool. And we have a whole toolbox for that. And Trust Builders is something that gets picked up in the first of the two day back to back annual planning session. And we spend about three hours going through some trust building. And it's really intended to do two things, help the team. Whatever version of trust they had walking into the session. We're just trying to bring it up a notch or two or more. Right. Because the speed of trust is, there's no shortcut to that. Right. You have to show up consistently, you have to be intentional. You have to foster and build that trust over time. It's not, there's no shortcut to trust. But what Lencioni specifically is talking about relative to trust is vulnerability based trust, not trust that somebody's gonna do what they say they're gonna do necessarily, because we do expect that if you say you're here to do it, follow through and do it. What Lenteoni is specifically talking about is vulnerability based trust. The ability to trust the people that are sitting next to you at the table that if you open up to them, they're not going to use it against you. In a future conversation, you're opening up in a way that you're saying, hey, I'm going to be vulnerable with you guys and gals. We're going to talk about some stuff that is special to me and I'm not sure that I'm great in this area and I need your help, want us to do better. And this is an area where I think that I can improve. Also on the flip side, vulnerability based trust is the ability to be open minded and, and be honest and share what's going on and what do you see in each of the people that sit next to you, helping them potentially identify some blind spots and then we can have a conversation about what are we going to do about those blind spots, if anything. And so the trust building activity, the trust building tools specifically is this iterative tool that we teach in the context of the annual planning that we ratchet up each year. We do annual planning and so it's materially a part of our process, but in real talk terms, we can't start there. We have to get all of this other foundational stuff in place and then we can start talking about ways that we can enhance and foster and build on this vulnerability based trust.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I know one, or I suspect one that resonates with you just because I've seen your staff and met your staff and interacted with your great staff. The assistance track. Yeah, so was that one. I'd love to hear about that and then also about your own experience with it.

Yeah. So the assistance track is a tool that used to be a part of our toolbox. And we've pulled it out of the 20 tools in our toolbox and moved it over to what we refer to as one of our additional tools that we can teach. And really what that means is we have these additional tools in the toolbox section of the leadership team manual that we can teach at the right time if it serves the client well. So we're. We typically would do that in the context of IDSing. Right. So it would be a tool that we bring out of our toolbox at the right time for the team if it's going to serve them. But it's not part of our prescribed implementation process. It's just an ancillary tool, if you will. But the assistance track is intentionally named Assistant track instead of assistant track because not everybody has afforded the luxury of having an assistant to support them and help them amplify their energy in their role. But the assistance track means there might be one person or more people that potentially could help offload some of the things that you're navigating. And so when we talk about that tool, we're going to talk about how you spend your time managing things like email and managing things like your calendar. How are you scheduling in your meetings, who's helping you focus on high leverage activities versus low leverage activities. So there's a lot of value in that tool. It's actually pretty quick teaching. It's about 10 or 15 minutes most of the time. It's really just intended to help folks on the team understand that, hey, there's probably a way you could save some time if you just got a little bit of help in some of these key areas. So it's a really helpful tool at the right time for a team. But we don't lead with that because we have more foundational things that we.

Need to cover for A hundred percent. A hundred percent in most of these Questions have come up for us lately from people who've. They've got the five foundational tools in place.

Yeah.

And now their, their ambition's ramping up and I find, I don't know if you've seen this, but I find like Q3, the third quarter of implementation and also the third quarter of the year is when often teams will maybe backslide a little bit and go, wow, are we too ambitious or what? They're learning more about their ability to set and maintain rocks. Set and maintain accountability on rocks. And that's where I find people usually ask the most questions about these other tools. Okay. Is there more we could be doing here? Yeah.

Yeah.

So you're able to. For anybody that didn't catch the very beginning, you've got how. What was the count on businesses? I lost track that you own.

Businesses are different than restaurants. So I've got three restaurants with Enos Pizza Tavern and one brand. I have a commissary kitchen that supports those three restaurants. Got another restaurant brand called Brood. We have a location in Fort Worth on Magnolia in the hospital district.

Okay.

We have a license agreement with a location in terminal D of DFW Airport. We're opening a coffee shop in spring of next year in terminal E. And it's early stage to talk about it, but we have another licensing coffee shop deal that might open in Addison.

Very nice. Okay, so that's restaurants under one business. Is that how you think of it?

I think of it as two separate brands.

Okay.

With two separate vto, two separate accountability charts. And those are each independent unit is effectively its own llc.

Got it.

There are real estate entities and other entities that go and support that stuff. That we have a whole management company and that's a different entity. So there bunch of things going on.

I'm pulling on this thread. I'm pulling on the thread because I suspect, and I believe you said like EOS allows you to have all these businesses, our entities, brands and restaurants running effectively so that they're only 5% of your time.

That's right. That's right. And that 5% fluctuates. I'm getting pulled into deal negotiations. I'd selection right now. So that's sure going up to the maybe that 10% marker, but then it'll drop back down to 5% or less once we're operational and we just have a wonderful team in place on both sides.

That's outstanding. I'll keep going through just some of the FAQs I have down. One is around the three step process documenter in particular, coming from organizations that have very mature SOPs, I find that they often confuse the three step process documenter with all of their other sops. Can you talk to that a little bit?

Sure, yeah. So pulling back the three step process documentary, what we're really doing is gaining strength in the process component of a business fundamentally. Gino's discovery, the reason he developed EOS as an entrepreneur operating system is the discovery that the truly elite top 5% of entrepreneur organizations have six key things in place that are super strong. We have to have vision, alignment, where we want to go, how we want to get there. We have to have the right people sitting in the right seats or on the journey to be to achieve that. We have to have an empirical pulse on the realities that exist every single week. The data component of the business, a team doing those three things is going to smoke out a lot of issues and opportunities. So we have to have a way to parse through that stuff. But not just the team level, but at every level in the organization. And we just level label that as the issues component. But don't get wrapped around the label. It's issue or opportunities, frankly, just things you have to talk about in a prioritized fashion. That's all that.

It's a good way to. That's a good way to frame it, in my opinion, that people don't always do.

Yeah, people get wrapped around the axel on it's. That's not an issue. We're not going to put it on the list. Is it something you need to talk about? Yeah, it's an issue. Throw it on the list. It's fine. It's okay. So then we have the process component, the way that we systemize our organization and I love this Deming quote, every system is perfectly designed to get the results that it gets. Meaning everything you're experiencing in your business right now today is the perfect manifestation of the system, the processes that you have in place and the people that are executing those process. And if you believe that, I believe that we can go about changing that to achieve optimal results, better results. And that's evergreen, by the way. And then of course we absolutely obsessed over the traction component, the sixth key component, meaning clarity on our quarterly priorities with this case accountability that we just call the meeting polls. And so the process component is strengthened by making sure that we have clarity on. Okay, what are the seven to 15 things that we absolutely unequivocally have to get right every single time we do that thing? What are those seven to 15 things? Let's just get really clear because we could build a system or a process for anything in an organization. We could, we could build a process for how we open the mail, but we don't really care about unless there's some critical mail coming in that might be important, but we don't really care about that as much as we might some sort of guest satisfaction or accurate and timely financial statements. We have to systemize the things that we care about the most. And EOS is really the best operating system that I've seen that really focuses on how can we simplify this for everybody on the team, the fluff, how can we eliminate the extra stuff, how can we simplify this so that it's easy to understand and easy to execute, so that we can move forward faster? And the three step process documenter takes that approach. And so while we just, all we're saying is let's just get really clear on the seven to 15 things that we have to get right consistently over time. What do we want to call those things? What do we want to label each one of those processes with clarity and alignment, creating a common language, common vernacular, who's going to own the process? Meaning who's going to be the champion to document the process in the right and best way? And the approach that we take on process documentation is a simplified approach. 20% of the steps agree as 80% of the results. Man, we're not documenting process to fix our worst people that can't figure it out. We're documenting process to free our best people. And so what's the version of documentation that works well for them? Okay, because we're going to fix the worst people because they're probably a GWC or a right person issue, wrong person, wrong seat, some issue there. We're going to solve for that. Right? But what we need to have in place is process documentation that basically just make sure our best people, they have the healthy guardrails. And another way to frame that, Scott, is it's like the pre flight checklist for getting them off the ground, right? So it doesn't take very long to go through that checklist but good God, you know that they're going to do it. They better do it every single time they want to get that plane off the ground. And along the way you better know if you're that pilot, if you're that person doing that checklist, you better know what an aileron is. Okay? Now most people don't know what an aileron is. And so that's going to be on the checklist. So if you haven't been trained on the right way to go look for that particular piece of the plane and the thing to look for on that aileron, then you're probably not equipped to run that process. And so that's where we have the second part. So beyond just the documentation piece, that's a simplified approach, pre flight checklist style. We need to make sure that these processes are followed by all. And, and so we have to train people on the right and best way to do these things. We have to then monitor and measure adherence to the process. And then if there's ever a deviation, we're going to hold people accountable and we just label that as LMA Leadership Management, Manifest Accountability. And then we're going to go back and review that process. The fourth step in the followed by all checklist. Just to make sure that it's whatever frequency, quarterly, annually or whatever you change out a major system or a platform that might impact the way that the process works. You're gonna go back and update that process, review it, update, and then that requires you to go back and retrain on the new version of the process. In other words, it becomes improvement, loop or cycle. And as long as you're doing that with the 7 to 15, the core things that you have to do, you're gunning aim strength in the process component. But if you think about it, process maturity is evergreen. We're never actually done just, we're never actually done getting the right people in the right seat. We're never actually done. We're always on a journey.

Yeah. The biggest mistake I see people make with process and this is from I've been doing process since the last century, is there's this massive push to get this perfect version of process documentation. And maybe we hire an expert and they produce this deliverable.

Yeah.

And that deliverable can be in a digital hip form, in a hip digital platform.

Yeah.

But within three months it's out of date and within six months nobody's looking at it. And then there's this kind of refrain, oh, we need to do that again, we need to do that again versus a simplified way to do it. Which even though I think sometimes people get turned off when they hear the volume 7:15. Oh my God, that's a lot. It's not. We've helped people just, let's just sit down and walk through a document together sometimes so that you can check this off your list. And people are usually delighted to see how simple it can be. And as you said, I Love the way you framed it as this is meant to free your best people, not fix the people that are in the wrong seat, don't have the capability, et cetera. I think that's a huge shift. The other note I took down is it really does give you a way to simplify things for your employees and that is. Is a foundational piece of being a leader. Can you simplify? And I know that's one of the five leadership abilities. I believe you're exactly right to simplify. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, it's the first of the five leadership abilities. And there's an Einstein quote that I love that articulates that, well, everything should be made as simple as possible. But not simple.

No, simpler. Yeah, 100%. And what I like about all of these tools, I find that I've rarely met a person, even if they have an mba, who isn't a bit intimidated their first time they take a management role, isn't a bit feeling out of their depth or suffering from imposter syndrome as they move into anything that might be qualified as leadership. The tools in this toolbox, I think understanding lma, understanding how that makes it you accountable as a leader for being able to simplify getting your processes buttoned up like this in a simple, doable format, not in a, oh my God, I'm going to have to go in a room for five weeks and do this. And now holding people accountable to it, understanding where the disconnects are, that's leadership and management.

Yeah.

I think that's the thing. I think people really do well when they start to understand, like, it's not. It's simple. That doesn't mean it's easy, but it is actually simple.

I think you're right. That. That's well said. It's. The trick is to make it simple. And it's, to your point, not exactly easy. In fact, it actually takes a little bit of intentionality and refinement to make it simple. Takes some time to make it simple. The mistake that I sometimes see teams make is they're like, okay, now that we've defined what our core processes are like, which ones do we consider core? Let's go to ChatGPT or an LLM and have it define our core process. And I was just like, okay, it's going to give you some probably pretty great stuff, but it's not going to necessarily give you what Jimmy and Sally are trying to navigate as they're working on this process within your organization already. And so what we find is best if we can have Conversations with those individuals that are running that process to really understand what is it that they're navigating, getting a full understanding as to what your version of a process. There's some great material out there on how you should run ap, right. But your version might be slightly nuanced and you should really understand what you have in place currently before you decide what, what you should have in the place in place in the future. Okay. Now we want you to optimize your process. We're pushing for that. And so yeah, be inspired by some other leading practices that are out there. If that's available to you. Let's leverage the tools that are available. But we're going to build process for our organization that work well for our people. Okay. And we're going to put it in a medium that is approachable for them. We want them to have the ability to just reach out and grab it. What's the easiest medium for them to access? When we went through our process documentation with Mark Winters, I come from a very high tech background and I was like, man, we should create this whole intranet site. And my team was like, Shane, you're missing the boat on this. Our people work in restaurants. They don't have access to a computer day in and day out. We need a three ring binder. And I'm so thankful our ops leader advocated for that heavily. It was like, oh yeah, that's pretty intuitive if you think about it. But I was trying to optimize it and make it better, but it was going to be inaccessible, which means it's not useful. Right. We want to make it useful for the people that are going to use it and sometimes that means different things for different people. So for the restaurant folks, yeah, three ring binder, that was going to work best for them. But for the back office team, they're all on computers, they don't have three ring binders. So we need to bifurcate where we have certain core processes documented. Right. So we just had to do the right version of process documentation for us. And for us the right solution was bifurcate it. And that's the best thing for now. And then we'll just, we'll iterate on that when it makes sense. And we have since I can say.

From the tech perspective, because a lot of our customers are software companies, some aren't technical at all, but we also are heavy users of AI at in every facet of the business business. And what you learn very quickly is if you just give a generic task, give me a process, you're going to get back a bunch of generic blog inspired fluff. Right. That is maybe was appropriate for a large Corporation in 1990 and made for good SEO on a blog post, but isn't something your people can follow and in fact gives you a bunch of extraneous information that makes it a little harder. Right, right. It makes it look like you did a bunch of work because it spits out a bunch of words. But you're not going to really empower your people. In fact, you're going to slow them down because they have to parse through this now and make sense of it.

I love it. The other thing that's just resounding in my head right now that's so important, I think we don't talk about this enough is it really helps to help your under your people understand why we're doing this process, why do it the way that we do it. If you can help people connect the dots on that, the adherence is going to go up exponentially.

Yeah, I totally agree. We recommend people think through their success criteria, number one and actually get explicit on how this ties into some aspect of their vto. Whether it's the vision, whether it's a one year goal, a rock or your three year picture, whatever it is, understand the context and how it fits. And that is the other thing I like about having the tool set. You continually teaching people about the business and how they fit into the business. And I don't know if you ever read the Great Game of Business, it's one of my favorite books. But I love that they basically taught everybody how to think about the business. And when you get that, it's far more magical.

Yeah, I think that's said well and I think EOS has a corollary there in that we actually encourage EOs run organizations to encourage their people to think and challenge them to think about the business and what it means to do their role and think through how they're going to solve their issues autonomously. Ideally, we want to equip people, we want to enable people and that that takes thinking and so that thinking with understanding right. And tying things down I think is critical. So the why behind the what? Super powerful for any process.

So we're going into or we're smack dab in the middle of quarterly planning session season. Do you have a set of favorite tips you give people to prepare ahead of their quarterlies?

So come to the table with clarity on your numbers. That'll make the conversation efficient when it comes time for accountability on revenue, profit and your Measurables have those preset ready to go, you know exactly where we landed pregame a little bit. Any hot topics or issues so that when it comes time to set rocks now we're having efficient conversations. I would say that the methodology, the workflow of the quarterly pulsing session, the way that we do a vision traction organizer review after your review of the prior quarter is we're looking for opportunities, especially when we get into the three year picture and most certainly the one year plan territory. On the VTO review, we should be asking ourselves is there anything about our annual goals specifically that we need to potentially take on as a quarterly rock in this next quarter? If so, make a note of that because we're going to come back to that in a little bit because that should be our chief inspiration in any rock quarter on the most essential things. The other thing to watch for is in your tool teaching, for example process, let's say I just taught process. How are we going to action what we just learned? Is somebody going to take a rock to figure out which medium in which we need to document. Maybe they take a pilot or process to really establish the version of documentation that works well for our particular organization that we can use as a template going forward for the other processes that may be chosen over time. On average there's about two processes to be documented per quarter is what we find. Some people do more, some people do less, two on average. So those are just a few seeds to plant. And then make sure the team is really thinking through any issues opportunities that need to be solved and make sure they get their representation on the issues list. One of the things that we do after we set rocks as we go through rock setting, we really have three phases of rock setting. First, we establish the new iteration of revenue, profit and measurable. What are we going to do for this quarter? Second thing being the company rocks, establishing what those are as the three to seven most essential priorities and the versions of dung written smart that we should get to with ownership based on who sits in those seats on the accountability chart most of the time. And then we set the individual rocks. So optimizing our business bandwidth of time. So everybody's going to have their roles, responsibilities, Sometimes there's seasonality to certain functions in the business where there's either more work to be done or less work to be done. How can we load balance that so that we're optimizing time in this particular 90 day increment of time and then anything that doesn't get picked up as a company rock or an individual rock needs to work its way through a short term or long term issues list and just getting clear on what we're going to tackle short term and long term. So the prep work is make sure you're thinking through hot topic issues. Make sure you're thinking through why rocks were successful in the past quarter. Is there anything that we need to repeat, anything that we need to adjust if they were not successful? Like what are we going to do better or differently so that we can achieve a rate of 80% or greater on rock completion quarter after quarter? Do we have the right people sitting in the right seats? Take a look at that accountability chart. If I were to say the five foundational tools of eos, the Vision, Traction Organizer, Accountability Chart, Rock Suite, and Pulse Scorecard, I would also have to say that the rebar within that foundation is the accountability chart. And we're always using that as a future state forward planning tool, an alignment tool on what the structure needs to look like so that we can be successful within the next six to 12 months. And we're building towards that. Most of the time we're building. Sometimes we're in a state of atrophy and we need to wreck the size of that accountability chart. Maybe we're getting rid of a division, maybe we're navigating something like Covid, God forbid. And things just changed massively. Like how are we going to restructure organization to survive this thing? Right? So we're using that accountability chart. It's not a stale static document, not one and done. It is an alignment tool and we're always going back to that. So the other thing that I would just say, and I know this is a little long winded, are there any major people moves that we need to make in this quarter? Because if there are, we better make them right. So we better make that a priority. Because what I found, the vast majority of issues that come up are only there because we don't have the right people in the right seats. Our ability to get our rocks done is predicated on having the right people in the right seats. Not just at the leadership team level, by the way, but that mid level manager is probably one of the most pivotal positions in the organization because without them operationalizing the things that we're prioritizing, we can't get it done. And we need them to help be the bridge to execution. So it's so important that we get.

The right people in the right seat and review. It's your quarterly planning session. This is your opportunity to come together as A team. Roll up your sleeves and make some impactful decisions. It's worth. I don't know. So before I say anything, don't let me bias you. What do you think a good minimum amount of time is for every leadership team member to prepare for that meeting?

My recommendation is a good solid clarity break. So that's typically an hour 90 minutes going into a planning session, be it quarterly pulsing or be an annual planning. A good solid clarity break to just think, invest in yourself. Give pause to what's going on and the moment you feel like you don't have enough time for those, it's probably time to take four of them. Right. You have to make time to save time. So that's so vital to this process.

That that reminds me of. I want to double click on clarity break because that is such an important concept. The businesses I've seen struggle the most in predating any involvement with eos. I used to go in for investors and help turn businesses around. Or in my management consulting career as well. The biggest inhibitor to growth is the continual commitment to lack of time. I don't have time to do this right now. I'm too busy. I need to go work more. And that is it sounds good. Somehow it's always false, I find.

Yeah. It's interesting. The most successful teams that I work with, the visionaries, we'll say the biggest difference for me is in my ability to invest time thinking. Most successful clients that I work with and those that busy themselves or allow themselves to get pulled into things or just can't help but stay away from. So if they have to go deep and they have to, I'll just label it metal and it zaps all of their time. They're not being wise about how they're spending their time. That's a very short sighted approach in a lot of ways. Now I get it. We have fires, we have to go put out fires. But that's probably rooted in something else. So let's go fix the route so you get rid of our fires.

I think the pivot people miss is there's a misperception that there will be this point in time in the future where you can take a breath. Right. But. But you're swimming. And I don't think you were in my talk at our we run on EOS conference. But the metaphor I used was rip currents.

Yeah.

And if you try to fight a rip current, just like you don't even, let's say you can make enough progress not to get swept out. You just exhaust yourself and drown it's not that you get to some magical point where you can just float for a little bit.

Yeah.

So if you're not intentional about making the space to. To. There's ways to escape a rip current, but you have to choose it. It's not something that you earn to. It's simply a choice that I'm going to stop and commit to this time because I believe in its importance.

It's well said.

I think there's something about often well intended.

Like we.

We all want to be that hard worker who pulls himself up by his bootstraps. Kobe making 800 shots. Yeah, Kobe did all those things, but he also spent time looking at his game, analyzing his game, deciding what he wanted to work on based on the game. Yeah, people miss that part of the equation. Tell me about clarity breaks.

Yeah. So it's time that you invest in yourself, in thinking, and everybody has a slightly different approach to what that looks like for them. But what we recommend is ideally a weekly clarity break. Find a time where you're predictably not gonna be peppered with all sorts of distractions and everybody has a different version of what that is for them. But it's a time that you can really isolate yourself and think and process. Now, the way that I recommend taking clarity breaks is having a medium in which you can capture your thoughts and notes. Gino Wickman uses a yellow legal pad. If you ever see Gino Wickman without a yellow legal pad out in the wild, something is materially off for him that day. They're married to each other. It's his best friend. He goes through tons of them. I'm not a paper person, so I use a tablet and I capture things in my notes app and I have all my notifications turned off. Like it's just me and my thoughts in a way that I capture them. And I will cycle through the different things that or on my mind, capturing thoughts and just giving it each a few minutes. And then with the remaining 15 minutes that I devote over the course of about an hour, if I feel like I need a little bit more time, maybe 90 minutes, but I'll leave about 10 or 15 minutes at the end, just go right back up to the very top of the list and sequentially go down every single line item and ask myself, what action can I take within the next on this particular thing? Is it important enough to gobble up some lines? Precious time, if it's not to me, to act upon it. Which version of an issues list should this live on? Which team should own this thing that's going on. How is this ultimately going to get solved if it's business related? And so I'll figure out a way to make that way that item to the right version of an issues list inside my organization. So sometimes it goes to my visionary integrator, same page meeting issues list. Sometimes it goes to the leadership team issues list. Sometimes I'll send it to my integrator for her to navigate which version of an issues list this should live on. But we'll figure that out together and then that thing will go get solved in a prioritized fashion. And that's how I think about clarity breaks.

Yeah, that, that fits with the neuroscience very well. And I think that every single person in the organization can benefit from it. I think it unlocks having time like that.

Yeah.

Really unlocks people's capabilities. This has been great. Anything you want to add?

Yeah, I, I do have just a real practical tactical thing and I'm latching on to what you just said. Every, everybody in the organization should have a clarity break. And I struggle with that sometimes because as a restaurant owner there are certain positions in my organization where I literally just need them to show up on time, clock out on time, wash the dishes expertly, make sure they don't break any dishes, let us know if the equipment is malfunctioning in any way and then clock out. That's what I need that person to do. And so it just full transparency. In my own restaurant organization, you ask the guy or the gal that's my dishwasher, they probably couldn't even tell you that we're running on EOs because we that that language doesn't really mean a lot to them. But they could probably. They better be able to talk about our core values. They better be able to articulate what's account what they're accountable for and what they're being measured against. So they understand the fundamentals, but maybe not the full executive leadership team version of the vernacular. So I just, we have adopted an approach and I encourage my clients to think through this for themselves as well. What's the right version of EOS for your organization? And traction is going to talk about roll it out to everybody. Okay. As an empirical truth. And I think that there's value in rolling it out to everybody, but I think there are different levels of understanding and leveraging the tools inside the organization, if that makes any sense.

It makes total sense. That's what why I found EOS aligned was there are principles involved and for leaders. And I would argue as many people as you can get to understand the linguistic tools, the language of it. It's helpful because it sharpens thought. But the important thing isn't that you've implemented eos. The important thing is that you've got these solid principles in place. EOS happens to be an incredibly efficient mechanism for doing it. I know it's the one true way, but that's why I think it's so successful. It is a very well thought out, very good one.

Yeah, awesome. Scott, I've had so much fun having a conversation with you today. Hey, thanks for joining us. For another episode, be sure to hit the like button below and click the subscribe button to be notified when new videos drop. See you next time.