#1 - Traction by Gino Wickman

The e-commerce community is so tight-knit and collaborative, that every so often a trend comes along and spreads like wildfire. Traction is not specifically targetted at online sellers, however, the typical $1M-$100M e-commerce business is perfectly structured to adopt Wickman’s methodologies, resulting in the perfect storm. 

Traction was the buzzword of 2020 for Amazon sellers in particular. The book is a blueprint for implementing the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), offering a helping hand for entrepreneurs that no longer can rely merely on hard grunt work and determination to grow. EOS is Wickman’s methodology for building a self-sustaining entity, powered by a dynamic system rather than a small group of humans. 

The cornerstone of EOS is your V/TO - the Vision/Traction Organizer. Put simply, this is a one-pager (double-sided) that organizes your long-term goals (vision) and documents how you’re going to get there (traction). The V/TO is built on six key business components: Vision, People, Data, Issues, Processes, Traction. Each component has a designated chapter, in which Wickman methodically walks through the EOS way for strengthening these areas in your organization. 

The book, Traction, is a small subset of EOS, that has implementers all over the world and 1000’s of businesses utilizing the methodologies to fuel their engine room. It’s borderline unbelievable that any and every small business can be summarized into a single V/TO, but Traction will leave you feeling empowered that you can do this on your own. 

My Most Important Lesson from this Book?

Vision-Traction: This may seem oversimplified, but the handheld method of translating your vision into traction is pure genius. Traction descends all the way from the 10-year target to the weekly pulse, closely explaining the transition from stage to stage to make a previously over-ambitious vision seem so acutely attainable. 

The hierarchy is as follows:

Core Focus - Why does your company exist? The answer should be no more than seven words, and not be financial.

10 Year Target - Where does the company see itself in 10 years?  

Marketing Strategy - 

• Your target market - ideal customer base 
• Your differentiators - three strengths that make your business unique
• Your process - your process from start to finish
• Your guarantee - a promise to customers

Three Year Goal - Measurable targets, in terms of annual revenue & profit, number of clients, internal capabilities and resources, systems, technology etc

One Year Plan - 7 most important steps to reaching your 3 year plan

90 Day Priorities - Each team member should have 90-day rock to put you on track to meet your one-year goal

Weekly Pulse - A weekly check-in on the 90-day priorities and one-year plan, based on scorecards

The process of going from Vision to Traction is one that most entrepreneurs struggle with, and generally, founders are either fanatic visionaries or down-to-earth implementers. Traction manages to bridge the gap between the two, offering a realistic path to success. 

How we’ve used this lesson in our company? 

Put simply, we’ve implemented EOS in our business, and Q1 of 2021 is the first quarter in which all of our internal team will have their own EOS rocks and scorecards. The key additional benefits I’ve recognized so far are:

Accountability - The Traction process of assigning a number and a 90-day target to each internal employee has created unprecedented ownership in our team. As Wickman says “numbers create accountability. When you set a number, everyone knows what the expectation is.”

Focus - The 90 Day Targets are an amazing mechanism for deciding what to do, but even more so, for determining what not to do. By formally communicating our 90-day targets internally, we reduce the risk of getting sidetracked chasing too many rabbits. 

Additional Nuggets of Gold

• Core Values - Before documenting the vision of the organization, EOS instructs you to define the guiding principles that will define who you are as a business. The idea of core values is not to define and archive, but rather incorporate them into the daily culture of the business, leaning on them to hire, fire, review, and reward people. 

The process for determining core values is to reverse engineer the people in your team who embody the spirit and values of the company, and identify their characteristics that you would like to cultivate in all of your team. The book dictates a clear method for wordsmithing the core values, to keep them simple, yet crystal clear to all team members. This is an exercise that most companies would never consider without a framework such as EOS, however, since determining our core values, so many complicated problems in our organization have found so much clarity. 

We’re really proud of our core values - reach out to me if you’d like us to share ours.

• L10 Meeting - Level 10 meetings are a core element of EOS, acting as a weekly pulse to ensure that your 90-day targets and 1-year plan are on target. The L10 meeting is the weekly leadership meeting, designed to concentrate all other meetings into a single 90-minute, hyper-focused, exhausting meeting. The meeting agenda is strictly defined and constant, requiring a diligent timekeeper to maintain the direction. 

The meeting rolls through updates, highlights, scorecard and rock reviews, before designating the bulk of the time to IDS - Identify, Discuss, Solve. The purpose of the meeting is to tackle the highest priority issues first, and solve as many key business issues as possible. 

We use a Google Slides format for preparing the updates and running the meeting - reach out to me if you’d like me to share. 

• Accountability Chart - Wickman challenges the traditional Organizational Chart, suggesting it is primarily an HR function that doesn’t truly represent the relationships and collaborations within the business. An Accountability Chart, on the other hand, is owned by the leadership team and clearly documents who is accountable for each function in the business. You can have a single person in multiple seats, but only one person in each seat. Built into the Accountability Chart is the concept of ‘delegate and elevate’, a management technique that expands an employees’ accountability as the function grows. 

Who Should Read this Book?

Traction is specifically targeted at young businesses that reach a stage in which hard work and determination are no longer enough for them to survive and grow. Yoni, my co-founder and CEO, read Traction in June 2020 and implored us all to read it immediately. About 2 months later, we were in a Traction frenzy, determining our core values and implementing EOS into all aspects of our business. It was perfect timing for us, as our vision was truly gaining traction before our eyes, and we wanted to ensure that we maintain our spot in the driver’s seat. 

Building your V/TO (Vision/Traction Organizer) and implementing EOS is a serious investment and time commitment. I wouldn’t recommend implementing it too early - it may stifle the romantic aspirational chapter of an early-stage startup that needs to run its course. 

However, as soon as the snowball starts forming, and you anticipate that it may start to lose control, you should read Traction. Wickman has a series of books on EOS, all targeted at different roleplayers in a business, so consider browsing through the catalog to find the perfect angle for you. 

Favorite Quotes

“Vision without traction is merely hallucination.”

“Clarify your vision and you will make better decisions about people, processes, finances, strategies, and customers.”

“Problems are like mushrooms: When it’s dark and rainy, they multiply. Under bright light, they diminish.”

“When everything is important, nothing is important.”

“The Scorecard is much more of a proactive tool, helping you to anticipate problems before they actually happen.”

“Numbers create accountability. When you set a number, everyone knows what the expectation is.”

“Numbers create clarity and commitment.”

“It is less important what you decide than it is that you decide.”

Series Introduction - How Books Replaced a College Degree

#10 - The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Ben Horowitz

#9 - The Lean Startup - Eric Ries

#8 - Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

#7 - Zero to One - Peter Theil

#6 - The Undoing Project - Michael Lewis

#5 - Freakonomics - Stephen D Levitt & Stephen J Dubner

#4 - Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson

#3 - The Sales Acceleration Formula - Mark Roberge

#2 - Multipliers - Liz Wiseman

#1 - Traction - Gino Wickman