Glossary
EOS®
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. Gino Wickman published it as Traction in 2007. It is deliberately plain: one page of vision, one chart of seats, one table of weekly numbers and one list of problems that never gets emptied.
01
What EOS covers, component by component
EOS asks a leadership team of three to seven people to work on six components at once: vision, people, data, issues, process and traction. Each component has a tool, and the tools run on a fixed rhythm. The weekly meeting checks the numbers and closes issues, the quarterly meeting resets priorities, and the annual meeting resets the plan.
Most small companies already have a strategy document, a spreadsheet of numbers and a Monday meeting. What they usually lack is any connection between the three, so the plan is not the thing the meeting talks about. EOS is opinionated about that connection, and the connection is the part that changes behavior. The tools themselves are ordinary.
Worked example: A sixty-person specialty contractor had a five-year plan nobody could quote and a management meeting that ran two hours on job updates. Six months into a rollout the plan is two pages on the wall, the meeting is ninety minutes with an hour of it spent on problems, and the owner can name the four things the company is finishing before Christmas.
Sources: Traction, Gino Wickman, chapter on the Six Key Components™; eosworldwide.com/what-is-eos
EOS 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.
02Six 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.
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.
04Level 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.
05KPIs and EOS: build a Scorecard that predicts results
Where KPIs fit inside EOS: the weekly Scorecard, 5 to 15 measurables, one owner each, and a simple picker to draft yours by industry in a few minutes.
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.