Pendragon Straight Talk: Episode Thirty-Six

 
TRANSCRIPT
 
JOHN GLOVER: Hello and welcome to another Pendragon Straight Talk. This week I was asked a sort of personal question really about my own company, and it was what systems do I use to get things done or keep the company on track.
 
We actually follow a thing called EOS, it’s a system called the Entrepreneurial Operating System. There is a book called Traction by Gino Wickman that explains it all to you or you can engage a qualified EOS implementer. It basically keeps you accountable for what you have decided you are going to do over the next year, three years, five years, ten years, so your overall plan then gets bought down.
 
It makes you achieve that by every ninety days we work through a process of what we’ve done in the previous ninety days and what we are going to do in the next ninety days to get to the end of the year goal.
 
We set what we call rocks in those periods, and those rocks are agreed by the management team. As the CEO I don’t make the decision and don’t manage down, the whole process is managed up, so the team know what they have decided is the core things we have to do over the next ninety days, so we reach the end of the year goals which they have set at the beginning of the year.
 
This then leads to individual rocks that have to be done by the CEO, and the team, and this filters down to the rest of the company, so everybody knows what the main focal points are for the next quarter and more importantly, why we are focusing on those. We then have those rocks put on our separate lists and meet weekly to discuss if they are on track or off track. This is called a Level 10 Meeting, we go around as ask everybody are you on track or off track, very simple. If they say they are on track we move on immediately, no further discussion, no wasting meeting time or words because they are on track. If they are off track we put them to one side and we discuss them during the second half of the meeting. How we analyse why they are off track is by the idea system, identify they issue, the real issue behind why something didn’t get done and then solve it so we can get back on track by next week’s meeting. In between that, obviously we would discuss and go back maybe to find what we think the issue is, is really there is another issue around that issue. So, it’s really analysing what the real issue is, discussing it and the solve it so that by next week we are back on track.
 
The idea is that the rocks are the key to the success of the business going forward, reaching its year goals, and then its two year goals and its three year goals. We meet every week as I said to discuss the rocks, and then we meet quarterly with our EOS implementer to discuss how our quarter went and what rocks we did or didn’t meet, hopefully we’ve met all of them, and if we did not we ask why not and analyse them in the same way in that meeting, in that day meeting, as to what was the actual real issue and what we can do about it over the next quarter to get us back on track.
 
There is obviously more to it than I just said, however the rock setting and the achieving the completion of the rocks over the quarter is really what keeps your company on track to get to the end of the year and reach those yearly goals. Its kept me personally focused than ever before and I can’t wander off and do something that is not relevant to what our core rocks are for the company or core rocks for me individually are for the next ninety days.
 
It gives the whole team ownership of what is occurring in the business as they set the rocks and the financial targets, not me, so its massive team effort.
 
So, that’s it in a nutshell, that’s the system I’m using. That’s how I get things done and I keep on track to achieve what the team has suggested what we should do for the year and what targets and that we are hoping to meet.
 
Hope that makes sense, and that you enjoyed that one, I look forward to talking to you next week.