Key Takeaways from “Traction” and the Entrepreneurial Operating System
I recently re-read "Traction" by Gino Wickman. After reading it for the first time last year, this book has become a reference that I revisit from time to time. Here are my main takeaways from this reading. Buckle up, there are quite a few!
Simplifying your organization is key. This entails streamlining the rules you operate under as well as how they’re communicated. The same goes for your processes, systems, messages, and vision.
Less is more.
You’ll have to delegate some of your responsibilities and elevate yourself to operate at your highest and best use.
As leaders, you’ll need to stop working in the business 100 percent of the time and work on the business every so often instead.
Most leaders are so buried in the day-to-day grind that they’ll typically think up flimsy workarounds just to get nagging issues out of their way so they can make it to the next week. If this happens long enough, their whole organization will come to be held together by duct tape and twine and it will ultimately implode.
There are really only a handful of core processes that make any organization function.
Once you all agree on your way, you will simplify, apply technology to, document, and fine-tune these core processes.
Handing over a turnkey system to an accountable leader makes it easier for you to delegate and elevate.
Velocity of decision-making is often as important as the quality of the decision.
The surest ways to lose your diamond mine are to get bored, become overambitious, or start thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. Find your core focus, stick to it, and devote your time and resources to excelling at it.
Success in one kind of industry doesn’t necessarily dictate success in another. You can only succeed in the kind of business that is right for you and your team.
One common thread unites successful people and successful companies. All of them have a habit of setting and achieving goals.
How do you know if you’re heading in the right direction if you don’t know which direction you’re meant to be going?
The right goal is the one that creates passion, excitement, and energy for every single person.
There is a proven way you provide your service or product to your customers. You do it every time, and it produces the same result. It’s what got you where you are. What you need to do is capture that process in a visual format to guide your sales team. It should be encompassed on one single piece of paper, it must illustrate your proven process, and it must have a name. It should show each step, from the first client interaction to the ongoing follow-up once your product or service has been delivered.
When everything is important, nothing is important.
If every goal is a “stretch goal,” how do you know what success is? Goals are set to be achieved.
Now that you clearly know where you’re going, you have to identify all of the obstacles that could prevent you from reaching your targets.
People need to hear the vision seven times before they really hear it for the first time.
Remain consistent in your message.
The right seat means that each of your employees is operating within his or her area of greatest skill and passion inside your organization and that the roles and responsibilities expected of each employee fit with his or her Unique Ability.
One of the obstacles in gaining traction and achieving your vision is that roles, responsibilities, expectations, and job descriptions are unclear due to structural issues. A hazy structure may have gotten you to where you are, but it will not take you any further.
As your company grows, you have to rise to your Unique Ability, and the same goes for your leadership team.
When the amount of work requires more than 100% to do the job well, something has to give.
Delegate more to other people, realize some efficiency, or eliminate some tasks altogether.
Delegate to the right person in the right seat and elevate yourself to your Unique Ability.
You must realize that you have no choice but to delegate.
Take a methodical approach to personnel changes, making sure that everyone on the leadership team is on the same page and then moving forward step by step.
If you want to grow, you have to understand that not everyone is going to be able to keep up and remain in the same seat forever.
Keeping people around just because you like them is destructive.
Only factual information can provide the basis for productive discussion and decision-making.
Anything that is measured and watched is improved.
A profit and loss statement is a trailing indicator. Setting up a weekly scorecard is a proactive tool, helping you to anticipate problems before they actually happen. Decide and list all of the categories that you’d need to track on a weekly basis to have the pulse of your business.
What gets measured gets done.
Right people in the right seats love clarity.
More is lost by indecision than by wrong decisions.
The good news is that there are only a handful of issues in the history of business. The same ones crop up over and over again.
Communication happens naturally when you make the work environment safe.
You should have healthy conflict and let the best solution come to light, even if it causes you some pain.
The number one reason most leadership teams spend the majority of their time talking is tangents.
Consensus management does not work. Once a decision is made, the leadership team must present a united front moving forward.
You cannot solve an issue involving multiple people without all the parties present.
In solving an issue, you have three options: Live with it, end it, or change it.
Solve your problem now rather than later.
The process component of a business is the most neglected one, often taken for granted by entrepreneurs and leaders.
By not giving your processes your full attention, it’s costing you money, time, efficiency, and control.
To break through the ceiling and build a well-oiled machine, you need to possess the ability to systemize.
In many organizations, people do their jobs however they want, resulting in tremendous inefficiencies and inconsistencies being embedded in the system.
Document your business’ core processes and ensure they are followed by all.
Identify your core processes. Break down what happens in each one and document it. Compile the information into a single packages for everyone in your company.
A business’ core processes typically include: HR process, Marketing process, Sales process, Operations process, Accounting process, and Customer Retention process.
Even something as simple as calling your business’ core processes by consistent names reduces complexity and increases efficiency in an organization.
When documenting processes, focus on the key 20% that produces 80% of the results.
Capture the basic steps of every process, because the real problem is that people skip steps, and generally not on purpose.
The biggest killer of efficiency and progress in a business? “Well, we’ve always done it that way.”
Your people doing things because they’ve always done them that way is not good enough. Eliminate steps, condense steps, and put checklists in place where possible.
Checklists are an extremely effective tool to create consistency, quality control, and repeatable results. There’s a reason pilots and health care professionals use them.
Don’t implement technology for technology’s sake, leading to unnecessary headaches. Technology must improve your way of doing business.
With your business systemized, you can better troubleshoot when problems arise, since many of them result from process-related issues.
Strengthening the process component of your business will give you more control.
Gaining traction in your business means making your vision a reality.
The ability to create accountability and discipline, and then execute, is the area of greatest weakness in most organizations.
By limiting priorities, you can focus on what is most important.
Do less, accomplish more.
In defense of (well-run) meetings: When people have to get something done for a meeting, they wait until the last minute and usually finish it. The more you can increase the meeting interval, the more spikes in activity you get, and then the more business you’ll finish.
Human beings stumble, get off track, and lose focus roughly every 90 days. Work with human nature and re-align priorities every 90 days.
What makes for great meetings is solving issues.
An action item should not remain on a to-do list for more than two weeks, and 90% of them should drop off every week.
Productivity increases when people know they are going to be held accountable. This is human nature.
When solving problems in your business, decide which issues are number one, two, and three. As long as you take them in order of priority, you’re attacking the right ones.
Kanter’s law: Everything can look like a failure in the middle.
The journey of building a great business is not about the destination at all. You need to enjoy the process along the way.
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