Patience, Belief and a Desire to Help
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Grandma Ica Shares Her Values When I was sixteen, and our parents become more prosperous, they decided to build a house for our family. My mothers’ parents sold their apartment and moved in with us. There was plenty of room and since they had great personalities, the cohabitation worked surprisingly well. It was a […]
What is an end run and why avoid it?
Several of my clients have complained over the years about how tricky it is to hold their direct reports accountable. Impatient CEOs try to fix perceived problems or lack of information by going direct to employees reporting to others. We call these actions end-runs and they have the potential to derail your company. When you […]
Four Ways for Selling Your Strategy to Potential Investors
Following last week’s blog on “Fixing Your Financials”, Selling Your Strategy is the second of five grooming strategies. You should execute as many of these as you can when preparing your Buyable Business for an equity harvesting transaction. Selling Your Strategy is made up of seven tactics, the four of which are the subject of […]
Grooming Your Business
Here is a real-life story about what grooming your business looks like. János Gréczi is the quintessential self-made entrepreneur. He started importing apparel and nonalcoholic beverages after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and over time he developed the latter concern into a full-fledged beverage distribution business. Later he invested in production equipment using government […]
Don’t let Covid Be Your Excuse
In the past 10 days, three of my Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) clients arrived at exactly the same conclusion: “Don’t let Covid be our excuse”. This is remarkable and obvious for different reasons. Let me explain. Let PPP be our bonus It is remarkable to see the resilience of American companies in this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. […]
Why ROcKs trump OKRs (unless you run a hyper-growth tech firm)
I recently met with a construction company committed to using the “OKR” (Objectives and Key Results) approach. This reminded me that the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) uses a modified version of OKRs, called Rocks. In my experience Rocks work better than OKRs, most of the time. The reason is that EOS wraps Rocks into a […]
The EOS of Everything
“Can you find me the EOS of software development?” – asked Nick Beavers, the owner of a prospering software company. “I have been looking for a simple self-sustaining system for writing code and was wondering if there was one out there.” — he explained. I pinged my EOS Implementer friends on Slack, but Agile was […]
Accountability for 47 Roles
A headhunter approached me today for a C-Level position at a large advertising agency. I have been self-employed for the last 19 years and have doubts whether I would even be capable of working at a large organization, but my curiosity got the better of me and I clicked to learn more. They had a […]
Mindless Processes: When Systemizing Gets out of Hand
You have been and will be reading a lot about the importance of processes, including mindless processes, in this newsletter. I am a fervent believer in them as they can help create scalable, manageable and fun businesses, where people at all levels execute efficiently, without hesitation, delivering quality performance. Isadore Sharp, founder of Four Seasons, […]
Be the Doctor, not the Nurse!
At a recent visit to my ophthalmologist, I was struck by how little time the doctor spent with me and nevertheless how satisfied I was with the visit. Of the 75 minutes I lingered, five were spent with the receptionist, and an hour with two medical associates. One of them conducted measurements and gave me […]