The REAL #1 Cause of a Company's Greatness

You are member of this tribe because you are an entrepreneur or part of the leadership team of an organisation. You have already achieved some success and hungry for more as growth doesn't have to stop here.

The systems and strategies you have used to this point may have worked very well, or you may have not used any system at all.?Whatever the case, the current strategy may not necessarily take you further.

Or the approaches you've used to achieve this success may have been expensive in terms of time, energy, stress and effect on your relationships. You need new or upgraded power tools to make sure you can sustain or grow your organisation more easily.

Traction for Entrepreneurs introduces tools, ideas and strategies that you may find useful to further grow?your organisation.

This week I talk about..

• Walking the Talk
• The #1 Cause of a Company's Greatness
• Special Invitation

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We Walk the Talk

Last week, I travelled to Sydney for our QCE – Quarterly Collaborative Exchange - our quarterly session - the 90-day world we talk about in EOS.?We had most of the 30 implementers in the APAC join us, including Japan and Vietnam, who all live and breathe EOS.

It felt rather strange but refreshing travelling internationally after nearly 29 months.?Though it didn’t seem that long a break, I did forget to do a few things of international travel.?The importance of maintaining a rhythm….

Anyway, back to our topic of the quarterly session - At EOS, we practice what we preach.?

• We review our V/TO (all 8 questions)
• We set our 3-year picture and 1-year plan
• We set Quarterly Rocks

And we report on some of the above during our quarterlies.

Each of the implementers in our community has been an entrepreneur.??Most of us have been adept at success and failure over the years.??We also have the fortune of spending thousands of hours with other business owners and leadership teams.??

So, our contributions have to come strictly from experience, not just theory at all our meetings.?

At every QCE, we also receive further training on EOS tools that we can teach our clients.??

I love our EOS community because it is always about adding value to our clients.?One of our core values is “Help First”.

The next QCE in September can't come soon enough.

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The Number One Cause of a Company’s Greatness is.....

Recently, Gino Wickman, author of the book Traction and founder of EOS, delivered his 2,000th EOS session. As he reflects back on his 14,000 hours in a session room with the leadership teams of 135 companies, it was crystal clear to him what the number one cause of a company’s greatness is.

Here's a blog post that summarises the findings.

I do not dare to recreate Gino's message (He has a brilliant knack), so here's verbatim from Gino's blog post (including the American spellings ??).

?“There isn’t even a close second. Although you might think that the number one cause that makes a company great is a compelling vision, luck, execution, culture, the business model, the product or service, timing, compensation, being first to market, or cutting-edge technology, it’s none of the above.

The number one cause of a company’s greatness is …?a strong leadership team”.

When I look back at thousands of sessions with my 135 clients over the last 21 years and ponder the ones who grow the way they want to, are healthy, have endured recessions, pandemics, and crises, and get consistently everything they want from their business, they are the ones who have strong leadership teams.

So what do I mean by strong? For the sake of this message, strong is defined by what I call “the seven criteria of a strong leadership team.” And what I mean by a leadership team is the people heading up the major functions of the business. Typically, this is three to seven people. Please treat this as a check-up to measure how your leadership team stacks up. I urge you to rate yourself on a scale from 1 to 10 on each of the seven criteria, with 10 being the best.

HERE ARE THE SEVEN CRITERIA OF A STRONG LEADERSHIP TEAM:

1.????They Have Rock Stars in Every Seat on the Leadership Team:?A strong leadership team has an?Accountability Chart? that is the right structure for the next level of growth, is forward-looking, and makes clear the major functions. Those major functions are filled with the right people in the right seats (e.g., Visionary, Integrator?, sales/marketing, operations, finance, etc.). Each member has total confidence and trust in their fellow team members, and everyone exudes the company’s core values. All seats are filled (no vacancies) with leaders who “get” their job, “want” their job, and have the “capacity” to do their job.

2.????They Are 100% on the Same Page with the Vision and Plan:?Strong leadership teams are in total agreement on every word in their?Vision/Traction Organizer? (V/TO?). There is not one chink in their armor. In my experience, once a leadership team agrees 100% on every word in their vision and plan, 85% of their issues disappear because they were symptoms of disagreement and lack of “same-pageness” on the leadership team.

3.????They Speak One Language:?A strong leadership team agrees to speak one common language throughout the organization and run on one operating system. An operating system means the way you meet, plan, measure, prioritize, solve issues, systemize, communicate, manage, and lead. I’ve observed that a team of average people running the company on the same operating system and speaking the same language will outproduce a highly skilled team of individuals, each doing it their own way, any day of the week. Said another way, you can’t build a great company on multiple operating systems; you must choose one. As one of my dysfunctional clients said in a session, “Separately, we are geniuses; together, we are morons.”

4.????They Are Open and Honest:?The most successful companies have leadership teams that are comfortable with conflict. They don’t hold back, they call out every issue, and they comfortably discuss them until they are resolved in one sitting.

5.????They Are Fanatical About Resolution: A strong leadership team, after calling out all of the issues, is fanatical about resolving them. They typically solve five to 15 issues every week in their weekly meeting and 30 per quarter in their quarterly planning sessions, regardless of whether it’s a people issue, a new idea, an opportunity, or a business problem. For strong leadership teams, issues never linger.

6.????They Treat Each Other as Equals: A strong leadership team, when in a room together, ignores hierarchy. Each member’s input is weighed exactly the same, and there is an equal exchange of dialogue. If five people are on the team, then each member talks about 20% of the time in the meeting. For example, the Visionary views the head of operations as an equal, and the head of operations sees the Visionary as the same. No one is intimidated or intimidating.

7.????They Possess the Secret Sauce:?They love each other.?A strong leadership team truly loves each other. They look forward to meeting together, and those meetings are passionate, intense, exhausting, fun, and never boring. They love working together. They make every business decision out of love and not fear (for the greater good of the company). This is a picture of my leadership team, which built EOS Worldwide for 10 years. We all happened to be standing near each other at the EOS Conference last week, so we snapped a picture. I truly loved working with each and every one of them. Love is truly the secret sauce.

So there they are: the seven criteria for a strong leadership team. Again, I urge you to score yourself from 1 to 10 on each criterion, forward this to your leadership team and have them score it, and then share it with each other at your next weekly meeting or your next quarterly planning session.Please be obsessive about building a strong leadership team. Make sure you have a rock star in every seat. Everything else will take care of itself. I’ve now had 10 Visionaries replace everyone on their leadership team in the interest of the greater good of the company. If you want the how-to manual for how to build a rock star leadership team, please read?Traction."

The link to the original post can be found here..

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Special Invitation - First In-person EOS Workshop in 3 Years

On Friday 17th June 2022, my fellow EOS Implementer Debra and I will be running the first In-Person EOS workshop in three years.

This is an interactive workshop where you will be shown the EOS tools & work through how these can be used in your business.

It's a privilege to take time out of your business to work ON your business & we're giving you that opportunity, as well as having a networking lunch with other mid-sized business peers.

Attendance pre-requisistes:

? Established Professional Services or Family Business

? Business owner with 10-250 staff & a Leadership Team

? Looking for growth & prepared to be open, honest & vulnerable

Spaces are limited so if you're keen to attend, then please comment or message me I will send you a link to register.

Date is Friday 17th June 2022 - 11.00am - 1.00pm

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Until next time, all the best.....

Do subscribe and share!

Vijay “Striving for Greatness” Nyayapati

Professional EOS Implementer?

P.S.?If you would like to know more on how EOS? can help your company, you can contact me one of these ways

1. Drop me a direct message with the words “Help - EOS”.

2. Grab 10-mins of my time - Use this?link?to book a 10-min chat with me and find out how I can help.

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A Professional EOS Implementer? is an experienced business coach, teacher, and facilitator of proven EOS Tools and processes that help guide leadership teams and entrepreneurs around the world to get what they want from their businesses. They coach business leaders on how to:

?? Clarify

?? Simplify

?? Achieve,

.. and help them get a grip on their business.