Hand-drawn sketch comparing climbing with a map and climbing with a guide

A Map or a Guide

I have a lot of respect for leadership teams that self-implement EOS.

They read Traction, start a Level 10 meeting, build a scorecard, and set their first rocks. That takes real initiative and it beats running a business on gut feel and hope.

But after working with a lot of leadership teams, I’ve noticed a pattern: self-implementing can quietly create a few problems:

  1. The person running the process is also a player in it. It’s hard to facilitate an honest IDS when you hold the strongest opinion in the room.
  2. The tools get adopted but not mastered. A scorecard no one trusts, or rocks that roll over every quarter, can convince a team that EOS doesn’t work for us. Usually it’s not the system, its how it was installed.
  3. The hard people conversation stays buried. Right Person, Right Seat is tough to address when the person leading it sits on the same team.

Pure implementation changes one big thing: the leader gets to be a full participant and an outside guide runs the process, holds everyone accountable (including the visionary), and pushes on the issues nobody wants to raise.

It’s the difference between climbing with a map and climbing with a guide. Both can get you up the mountain. One gets you there with fewer wrong turns and a lot less frustration.

If you’re self-implementing and feel stuck, you’re not doing it wrong. You may just be ready for a guide.

Hand-drawn sketch of a failed engine part and its hidden cause

The Part That Failed

In my Caterpillar Dealer days I spent a lot of time on failure analysis. One I remember was a connecting rod sticking out the side of the block. The cause turned out to be excess gasket maker that clogged an oil passage. We had to answer a lot of questions before we got there.

What I learned is that the part that failed was usually not the cause. You started with the damage and kept asking what happened right before it. Each answer led you one step further back. Almost every time, the trail ended at something small and early, like a step in assembly that nobody was checking.

Leadership teams have the same problem. When an issue keeps coming back, keep asking why until you find the step nobody owns. Then assign it to one person.

Hand-drawn Q4 Rocks Check sketch

Q4 Rocks Check

Q4 ROCKS CHECK

We’re about three weeks into Q4, which makes this a good week to check your quarterly goals. In EOS we call them Rocks. They’re the handful of priorities each person commits to finishing in the next 90 days. Here’s what I’d do.

  1. Pull up every Rock on the leadership team.
  2. Have each owner mark it on track or off track. Only those two options.
  3. Anything off track goes on the Issues List for your next Level 10 meeting.

There are roughly ten weeks left in the quarter. That’s enough time to recover a Rock if the team deals with it now. It usually isnt enough if you wait until week ten.

Root Cause

Most leadership teams are great at discussing problems. Very few are great at making them disappear forever.

If your business keeps dealing with the exact same issues month after month, you’re likely treating the symptom, not the root cause.

In EOS, we use the Issue Solving Track (IDS) to help teams stop talking in circles and start executing:

  1. Identify: Uncover the true root cause, not just what’s on the surface.
  2. Discuss: Evaluate real solutions, not just feelings.
  3. Solve: Walk away with clear action items due in the next 7 days.

Stop letting recurring issues weigh your leadership team down. Pick one problem this week and go after the root cause.

The Skeptic in the Room

I always look for “The Tenacity Leader” during a client’s first EOS session.

If you’re familiar with Patrick Lencioni’s 6 Types of Working Genius, you know who this is. They’re the execution driver. The DO-er.

And they are usually pissed off about being trapped in a room for an all-day meeting.

They walk in disconnected, crossing their arms, convinced they’re about to endure 8 hours of “corporate fluff” and flavor-of-the-month exercises when they have actual work to do.

Last week, I started an implementation with a brilliant new team. Great Visionary owner, amazing industry passion, fantastic culture. But within five minutes, I spotted my guy. (Well, two guys, but one stood out in particular.)

His arms were crossed. His expression was a lockbox.

I directed much of my initial energy toward him. Not to single him out, but to let him know subtly… I see you. I get it.

If you know real EOS implementation, you know we start with foundational teaching. But after a few hours of download, we shift into the heavy lifting:

  • Building a clear Accountability Chart
  • Setting sharp Quarterly Priorities (Rocks)
  • Establishing a Level 10 meeting pulse
  • Defining real, forward-looking Scorecard metrics

As we started assigning names to priorities and establishing weekly accountability, I saw a shift. He perked up.

His face didn’t break expression all day, though. So when we reached the end-of-day conclude and asked for feedback. Were expectations met? Day rating from 1–10? Then, I held my breath.

“I didn’t have expectations because I didn’t want to be here anyway,” he said. “And I rate the day an 8 only because everyone else rated it a 10.”

I swallowed hard and nodded. “Fair enough, thanks for the honesty.”

Then he cracked a slight grin.

“I’m kidding. Once you got past the first two hours of bullshit, we actually did some really good work. We defined things that should have been done months ago. My real rating is a 10. I thought this was going to be another corporate exercise, but this is different.”

Here’s the truth. EOS isn’t a seminar or a passive workshop. It’s a operational system that forces execution through real accountability.

I love having naysayers in the room. They’re a speed bump at first, but once they realize the system is designed to eliminate friction and get shit done, the biggest skeptic almost always becomes the system’s biggest champion.

Decision Rights

“A company that cannot operate without its owner isn’t a business. It’s a highly compensated job.”

That line from this Forbes article is the whole thing.

I meet owners every month who built something impressive and then found out they had bought themselves the hardest job in town. Every decision routes through them. Growth stops at the edge of one person’s calendar.

The article makes one point I would underline twice. This is not a delegation problem, it is a decision rights problem. Handing someone a task is not the same as handing them the authority to decide.

Start with who owns what. Then decide what they get to decide without you.

You built a company. Make sure it does not (or did not) turn into a job.

More Than the Tools

Tomorrow, I start a new EOS journey with a new client, and I’m fired up.

They’ve used some EOS tools before, which means they’ve already seen glimpses of what clarity, discipline, and accountability can do.

And now comes the exciting part: running the full EOS process, purely.

Because EOS is not about grabbing a few tools and hoping they stick. It’s about helping the leadership team get 100% on the same page with their Vision, gain real Traction, and become a more Healthy, cohesive team.

That’s when the tools stop feeling like separate pieces and start working together as a complete system.

Tomorrow is day one of that journey. Simple. Practical. Real. And, I believe, incredibly fruitful.

The Growth Ceiling

A great idea can get your business off the ground. But it won’t get it to the next level.

When entrepreneurs start out, they are fueled by passion, a killer product, or a stellar service. And that hustle works but only up to a point.

As you grow from 5 employees to 20, 30, or 40, a major shift happens. Without a definitive system and culture in place, everyone starts executing based on their own past experiences. Suddenly, you have dozens of people doing things vastly different ways.

The secret to breaking through that growth ceiling? Installing a system.

When you build a consistent operating system for your business, you unlock:

  • Scalability: True growth without the chaos.
  • Profitability & Efficiency: Less wasted time, better margins.
  • Customer Satisfaction: Your market gets the best version of your business, every single time.

Watch the video on LinkedIn to see why consistency is the ultimate growth hack.