Pete’s take…
Running a business and being a leader is not for the meek. It takes courage, resiliency and a good plan to be successful. According to Bloomberg, 80% of businesses will fail in their first 18 months. The Motley Fool states that about 50% of business’s fail within their first 5 years. With those odds, it makes sense to have a solid plan in place to increase your chance of success. Traction provides that plan.
I have to admit I wasn’t initially excited to read his book but once I dove in, it was hard to put down. Actually, I did put the book down quite a few times, but it was because I was jotting down notes on how to use the EOS system. The author, Gino Wickman, did a great job of developing a system for successfully running a business. He calls it the EOS which stands for Entrepreneurial Operating System.
Traction not only jazzed me up about analyzing how we run our business, it also gave me some great steps for taking immediate action. Cheryl and I have already incorporated many of the tools described in the book into our own business. Gino writes of the six components of any business; Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process and Traction. As I read the book, I realized all the things I could have done to be a better leader in my past roles. The good news is that it’s never too late!
One area the author writes about is the importance of leaders to surround themselves with great people. It is critical to have the right people in the right seats. A business owner may have the right person, but it’s possible that the person may be in the wrong position. In this situation the person shares the company’s core values but isn’t doing the right type of job for his/her talents. It is important to move that person to the right seat so he/she can be successful. If there is no seat available for that individual, tough decisions may have to be made.
Even worse than having the right person in the wrong seat is having the wrong person in the right seat. In this case, you have an employee who is very productive but doesn’t share the company’s core values. This can be very damaging to other employees and to the customers. The author came up with a tool to help determine if you have the right people in the right seats. It’s called The People Analyzer. You can download it from the EOS website here. I highly recommend reading the book before using the analyzer, so you first spend time clarifying the core values of your company.
The EOS tools are easy to understand and are based on sound common sense principles. Traction is a helpful resource for businesses doing well as those that are struggling. Watching your business grow and become more profitable is the fun part of being a business owner or leader. Reading this book helped me see that while we were doing many of the right things, there was plenty of areas in which we can improve. Traction is well written and was quite enjoyable to read.
Cheryl’s take…
There’s a lot to digest in this book by Gino Wickman, but it was well worth the time spent. Traction is one of 5 books in the Traction Library, which is a set of books designed to help business owners and leaders achieve better results through the implementation of a standard set of tools. Traction is written to explain the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) and those tools in detail and it does that well.
What I liked about this book was how clearly it was written and how easy it was to implement the tools immediately within our consulting business. Each of the 6 components of the EOS is designed to help you gain clarity around core elements in your business and the book does a good job of guiding you in the process.
The book not only covers the 6 main components in detail, but it also includes a section for putting it all together and taking action. Best practices + Action = my favorite formula!
Even if you don’t implement the EOS Tools for your business, the exercises covered in this book will help you analyze your current state and potentially identify areas in which you can improve. TRACTION was more than worth my time. I’d be curious to hear what you think.
