Glossary
Every EOS® term, in plain English
The vocabulary a leadership team runs into in its first year, written by people who are not selling you the system. Each entry gives the plain definition, how the term is used inside EOS specifically, why it matters, and one worked example. Those examples are composites of situations we have seen at companies of that size, not named client engagements, and the figures in them are illustrative.
01
Vision
Vision terms are the ones a leadership team writes down once and argues about for a year: where the company is going, what it stands for, and which customers it is actually for. They live on a two-page document and get read out loud every quarter, which is the only reason anybody remembers them.
1-Year Plan
The 1-Year Plan is the coming twelve months written as a date, revenue and profit numbers, a few measurables and three to seven goals to finish.
0210-Year Target™
The 10-Year Target is the single long-range goal a company is aiming at, far enough out to shape structural decisions and close enough to feel real.
033-Year Picture™
The 3-Year Picture is a short written description of the company three years out, carrying a date, revenue and profit figures and a few measurables.
04Core Focus™
The Core Focus is a two-part answer to why the company exists and what it should stick to: its purpose or cause, and the niche it is genuinely good at.
05Core Values
Core values are the three to seven behaviors a company actually hires, fires and promotes on, written in words people already use at work.
06EOS
EOS is the Entrepreneurial Operating System, a fixed set of tools and meetings that a leadership team uses to run a small or midsize company.
07EOS Model®
The EOS Model is the one-page diagram of the whole system: six components arranged in the order a leadership team is meant to strengthen them.
08Guarantee
A guarantee in EOS is one written promise that removes the thing a buyer is most afraid of, specific enough that breaking it would cost you something real.
09Marketing Strategy
In EOS, marketing strategy means four answers rather than a plan: who you sell to, what makes you different, how you deliver, and what you promise.
10Proven Process
A proven process is your way of serving a customer drawn as three to seven named steps on a single page, with a guarantee at the end.
11Six Key Components™
The Six Key Components are the parts of a business EOS says every leadership team has to strengthen: vision, people, data, issues, process and traction.
12Target Market
The target market in EOS is a written description of who your best customers are, specific enough to sort a list of companies into yes and no.
13Three Uniques
The Three Uniques are three things true about your company which, taken together, no competitor can claim and a customer would actually care about.
14V/TO®
The V/TO, short for Vision/Traction Organizer, is a two-page form answering eight questions about where a company is going and what it will do next.
15Vision Building®
Vision Building is the pair of full-day sessions where a leadership team fills in the V/TO, usually held about thirty days apart early in a rollout.
02
People
People terms cover hiring, seats and the honest conversations in between. The system is blunt about it: the right person means someone who shares the company's values, and the right seat means someone who wants the job, understands it and can do it. These words are how teams say that out loud without it turning personal.
Accountability Chart™
The Accountability Chart is a picture of the seats a company needs and the three to five things each seat owns, drawn before anybody's name goes in a box.
02Delegate and Elevate™
Delegate and Elevate is a four-box exercise that sorts everything on your plate by whether you are good at it and whether you enjoy it.
03GWC™
GWC stands for gets it, wants it, and has the capacity to do it, the three-question test for whether somebody belongs in a particular seat.
04LMA
LMA is short for leadership, management and accountability, the three things EOS expects from anybody who has people reporting to them.
05People Analyzer®
The People Analyzer is a grid that rates each person against the company's core values with a plus, a minus or something in between.
06Quarterly Conversation™
The Quarterly Conversation is a short, informal one-to-one held every ninety days between a manager and each of their people, away from any review.
07Right Person, Right Seat
Right person, right seat is a two-part test: the right person shares your core values, and the right seat means they get the job, want it and can do it.
08Same Page Meeting
A Same Page Meeting is a private session between the Visionary™ and the Integrator™, usually monthly, where the two of them settle disagreements early.
03
Data
The Data component replaces opinion with a handful of numbers everyone can see. These terms cover the weekly board, the rows on it, and the gap between a number that reports what already happened and one that warns you what is coming. Most teams start here when they want the meeting to get shorter.
Measurable
A measurable is a single number owned by one person, with a goal against it and a period, and it is what a Scorecard row or a Rock finish line is made of.
02Scorecard
A Scorecard is a weekly table of five to fifteen numbers that tells a leadership team whether the business is on track, one owner and one goal per row.
03Weekly Number
A weekly number is the figure that goes into one row of the Scorecard for the week just finished, reported by its owner as on track or off track.
04
Issues
Issues are everything in the way: the stalled project, the customer nobody wants to call, the role that has been open since March. These terms cover how a team gets them onto one list and works through them in order, rather than raising the same three problems every week and solving none of them.
Compartmentalizing
Compartmentalizing means putting each issue in the meeting where it belongs, so a strategic question raised on a Tuesday waits for the quarterly.
02IDS®
IDS stands for identify, discuss, solve, the three-step routine EOS uses to close a problem in the meeting rather than discussing it again next week.
03Issues List
The Issues List is where a team writes down every problem, stuck decision and half-formed idea, so they get solved in order instead of raised twice.
05
Process
Process terms are about writing down the handful of things the company does over and over, agreeing on one way to do each, and getting everyone to follow it. It is the least glamorous part of the system and the one that decides whether the business can run without the person who built it.
Core Processes
Core processes are the handful of things a company does over and over that decide whether customers stay happy, usually six to ten of them.
02Followed By All
Followed by all is the second half of the process component: once the core processes are written down, everybody in the company has to work the same way.
03Three-Step Process Documenter™
The Three-Step Process Documenter is the method EOS gives for writing down a core process: identify it, break it into major steps, then describe each step.
06
Traction
Traction is the half of the system that turns a plan into work: ninety-day priorities, a weekly meeting with a fixed agenda, and a short list of issues the team actually closes. These are the terms you hear most in the first quarter, because they are the ones that change what next Tuesday looks like.
Annual Planning
Annual planning in EOS is a two-day session where the leadership team resets the vision, agrees next year's plan and works on how the team itself is doing.
02Clarity Break™
A Clarity Break is scheduled time away from the business, with a notebook and no phone, that a leader takes for thinking and nothing else.
03Company Rocks
Company Rocks are the three to seven priorities the whole business commits to for the next ninety days, agreed before anybody sets a personal one.
04EOS Process®
The EOS Process is the fixed sequence of sessions an implementer runs with a leadership team, from a free overview to the quarterly meetings.
05Focus Day®
The Focus Day is the first full session of an EOS rollout, where a leadership team builds the Accountability Chart, sets Rocks and drafts a Scorecard.
06Level 10 Meeting™
The Level 10 Meeting is a ninety-minute weekly leadership meeting that runs the same agenda every week and ends on the hour.
07Meeting Pulse
The Meeting Pulse is the fixed rhythm of meetings EOS asks a company to keep: the same weekly leadership meeting, a full day each quarter, two days a year.
08Organizational Checkup
The Organizational Checkup is a twenty-question survey that scores how strongly a company is running each of the six components, out of a hundred.
09Quarterly Pulsing
Quarterly pulsing is the habit of resetting priorities every ninety days, on the argument that a group of people loses focus after about a quarter.
10Quarterly Session
A quarterly session is a full day away from the business, where the leadership team reviews the last ninety days and sets the next Rocks.
11Rocks
A Rock is one of the three to seven priorities a team commits to finishing in the next ninety days, with one owner and a clear finish line.
12To-Do List
The To-Do List holds the seven-day commitments that come out of solving issues, each with one name against it and a single week to be finished.
13Traction
Traction is the EOS word for the discipline and accountability that turn a plan into finished work, and it is the sixth of the six components.
07
Roles and people
Roles terms name the jobs at the top of a company and the tension between them. Who sets direction, who runs the place day to day, who owns which number, and what happens when one person has been doing all of it. Getting these words agreed is usually the hardest week of a rollout.
Certified EOS Implementer
A Certified EOS Implementer holds the middle of the three tiers, reached by keeping a full roster of client teams and running sessions all year.
02EOS Implementer®
An EOS Implementer is a facilitator who runs the sessions, teaches the tools and holds a leadership team to the process, working as an outsider.
03EOS One™
EOS One is EOS Worldwide's own software for running the tools, holding the V/TO, the Accountability Chart, the Scorecard and the weekly agenda.
04Expert EOS Implementer
An Expert EOS Implementer holds the top tier EOS Worldwide awards, reached at somewhere around five hundred session days delivered to client teams.
05Fractional Integrator
A Fractional Integrator is hired part-time to run the day-to-day of a company that needs the seat filled but cannot carry a full-time salary.
06Integrator
The Integrator is the person who runs the company day to day, holding the leadership team accountable and settling arguments between departments.
07Leadership Team
The leadership team in EOS is the three to seven people who own the major functions and who run the whole system, weekly meeting to annual plan.
08Professional EOS Implementer®
A Professional EOS Implementer has completed EOS Worldwide's training and is licensed to run the sessions, the first of three recognized tiers.
09Rocket Fuel®
Rocket Fuel is the 2015 book by Gino Wickman and Mark Winters about the pairing of a Visionary with an Integrator, and the shorthand for it.
10Self-implementing
Self-implementing means running EOS from the books and free worksheets, without hiring a facilitator, for a few hundred dollars and a lot of discipline.
11Visionary
The Visionary is the person who generates the ideas, holds the big relationships, protects the culture and sees round corners.
08
KPIs and measurement
Measurement terms belong to no framework in particular. They are the vocabulary of numbers: what counts as a key indicator rather than a metric, how targets differ from goals, and why a number nobody owns changes nothing. Useful whether or not the company runs on a named operating system.
Balanced Scorecard
The Balanced Scorecard is a framework from Robert Kaplan and David Norton that asks a company to measure four things at once and not money alone.
02Benchmark
A benchmark is a figure from outside your company used to judge whether your own number is any good: an industry median for churn or win rate.
03Cadence
Cadence is how often a number gets read out and answered for, and it is a property of the meeting rather than of the metric itself.
04Cash conversion cycle
The cash conversion cycle counts the days between paying for something and being paid for it: inventory days plus receivable days, less payable days.
05Churn rate
Churn rate is the share of customers, or of recurring revenue, that goes away in a period: customers lost divided by customers at the start of it.
06Cohort
A cohort is a group of customers or employees who started in the same period, tracked together over time so you can compare January's signups with June's.
07Contribution margin
Contribution margin is what one job or customer contributes toward fixed costs after its own variable costs are paid: price minus variable cost.
08Customer acquisition cost
Customer acquisition cost divides everything spent winning customers in a period by the number of customers won, salaries and commission included.
09Customer lifetime value
Customer lifetime value estimates the gross profit a customer produces before leaving, usually average revenue times gross margin divided by churn.
10Cycle time
Cycle time is how long one unit of work takes from start to finish: order received to order shipped, ticket opened to ticket closed.
11Dashboard
A dashboard is a screen showing current values for a set of metrics, usually pulled automatically and refreshed on its own.
12Days sales outstanding
Days sales outstanding is the average time it takes to collect an invoice, calculated as receivables divided by revenue, times the days in the period.
13Employee turnover
Employee turnover is the share of staff who left in a period, usually a year: leavers divided by average headcount, split into voluntary and involuntary.
14eNPS
eNPS is the same question turned inward: how likely are you to recommend this company as a place to work, scored zero to ten, promoters minus detractors.
15First-call resolution
First-call resolution is the share of customer contacts settled without a callback, a transfer or a second ticket: one conversation, problem gone.
16Goal band
A goal band replaces a single target with a range: green above one number, red below another, and a middle zone that means watch this.
17Gross margin
Gross margin is revenue minus the direct cost of delivering it, as a percentage: a ten thousand dollar job costing six thousand runs at forty percent.
18Input metric
An input metric counts the work a team puts in: calls made, quotes issued, shifts staffed, parts ordered, invoices sent on the day of delivery.
19KPI
A KPI is a number a leadership team has agreed to run the business by: one owner, a goal written next to it, and a slot on the weekly agenda.
20Lagging indicator
A lagging indicator reports a result after the period that produced it has closed: revenue, gross margin, employee turnover, satisfaction scores.
21Leading indicator
A leading indicator measures the activity that produces a result, early enough that what your team does this week still shows up in the number.
22Metric
A metric is any measurement your systems can produce: page views, tickets closed, average order value, headcount, days since the last accident.
23Metric owner
A metric owner is the single person who answers for a row every week, which is not the same as the person who happens to have access to the report.
24Net Promoter Score
Net Promoter Score asks how likely a customer is to recommend you on a scale of zero to ten, then subtracts the detractors from the promoters.
25Net revenue retention
Net revenue retention measures what happened to the money you already had, comparing revenue from existing customers now against a year ago.
26North Star metric
A north star metric is the single number a company picks to stand for the value it delivers, used to keep every team pointed the same way.
27OKR
OKR stands for objectives and key results: a short qualitative objective paired with about three measurable results that prove it happened.
28On-time delivery
On-time delivery is the share of orders, jobs or shipments that met their promised date: fifty jobs due, forty-six on time, ninety-two percent.
29Output metric
An output metric counts what came out of the other end of the process: jobs completed, deals closed, revenue booked, support tickets resolved.
30Pipeline coverage
Pipeline coverage divides open opportunity value by the sales target, so three times coverage means three dollars in play for every dollar needed.
31Ratio metric
A ratio metric divides one number by another: win rate, cost per lead, revenue per employee, the percentage of orders shipped on time.
32Revenue per employee
Revenue per employee divides annual revenue by full-time equivalent headcount and gives one crude read on how much a company produces per person.
33Sales cycle length
Sales cycle length is the median number of days between a defined starting point, usually qualification, and a deal closing either way.
34SMART goal
SMART is a checklist for writing a goal so that anybody can tell whether it was met: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
35Target
A target is the number written beside a measure that says what a good week looks like: twelve proposals, ninety-five percent on time, cash collected.
36Trailing 13-week view
A trailing thirteen-week view keeps a quarter of history beside the current number, so one bad week reads as noise and a repeated miss reads as a pattern.
37Utilization rate
Utilization rate is the share of available hours that are billable or productive: forty hours paid, thirty billed, seventy-five percent utilization.
38Vanity metric
A vanity metric is a number that reliably goes up, feels good to report, and changes no decision: page views, followers, total signups since launch.
39Variance
Variance is the gap between the target and the actual, written as a number or a percentage: goal twelve, actual nine, variance minus three.
40Win rate
Win rate is deals won divided by deals decided in the same period, counting the wins and the losses and leaving out everything still open.
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