Glossary
Core 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. They are found by looking at the employees you would clone rather than invented at an offsite. A value you would not fire somebody for breaking is a preference.
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How EOS® uses Core Values
EOS treats core values as the first half of the phrase right person. A leadership team lists the people who make the company what it is, works out what those people have in common, cuts the list to a handful, and then rates everyone against it with the People Analyzer®. The same values open the quarterly conversation with every employee.
Values only do work when they cost something. The test is whether a top salesperson who breaks one gets a difficult conversation, and in most companies the answer is no. Writing them down does not fix that by itself, but it makes the inconsistency visible to everybody in the room, which is usually where the change starts.
Worked example: A twenty-person marketing agency had five words on the wall that nobody could name. In the session they picked three instead, one of which was that people own their own mistakes out loud. Within a quarter it had been used in two real conversations, once to keep somebody who was struggling and once to let somebody go.
Sources: Traction, Gino Wickman, chapter on Vision; How to Be a Great Boss, Gino Wickman and Rene Boer
People 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.
02Right 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.
03V/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.
Start with a real question
Not sure which of these you actually need?
Tell us what the leadership team is arguing about. A person replies within one business day with a straight answer, whether that is a book, a tool or an implementer.
A person reads every one.