We’re continuing our foray into The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) today. EOS focuses on senior leadership in business, using a set of simple concepts and practical tools. Scott Morin, owner and lead consultant of Bytown Ventures, sat down with me to give us the details on how EOS may benefit your business.
Vulnerability is the cornerstore to building vision
Specifically in this edition, we’ll focus on vulnerability. The main definition of vulnerability is uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. The process of setting or building a vision takes a great deal of vulnerability, and leadership needs to be ready for that.
Scott says, “Being vulnerable means letting people know that there have been situations in the past, or maybe the situations that you're challenged with right now, where you are not infallible. And I can tell when I'm working with an organization, whether or not there's a level of vulnerability, right out of the hopper, just when we do a check-in, and people share good news. If I see a leader getting quite specific with regards to their personal situation, I can pretty well surmise that they're already at that initial stage of showing vulnerability. It’s basically trust. Vulnerability is the foundation. And if you have trust based vulnerability, you can actually make better decisions because people are not afraid to oppose each other professionally, so that the best decision gets made.”
What does getting started with EOS look like?
I asked Scott to share the best way to start getting familiar with the EOS system. As with most things, he says the starting point is a clear vision for the business. Further, it's about making sure that the vision is clearly understood across the firm and also, then, “centrally sourced”. “What we mean by that is it can't just be one person’s vision, there needs to be a collective vision. And it usually starts at the senior leadership team. We want to make sure that everyone's on the same page with regards to what the vision for the organization is. And then we also want to make sure that it's communicated right down to the lowest level within the organization. And it's crystal clear. More often than not, that is not the case. We've got a bunch of polling exercises that we can go through to determine how exposed you are on vision” says Scott.
Organizational maturity required to implement the EOS way
Scott shares from personal experience that sometimes when people come into the system from a tech startup background, the journey is a little different. “When I discovered this system, and went back to my community, my network that knew and trusted me was a source. I've helped a number of relatively early-stage, even pre-revenue companies with the system. But generally speaking, that is not what happens.”
Typically, the organizations that have success with the EOS way need to have been in business for a period of time; anywhere from five to 10 years. Many firms that benefit are in the 25 to 50 employees range. They are often founder-led organizations that have initially started out quite organically, and then perhaps hit a ceiling. We went into detail on that in our last couple of posts in the series. (Read this one for context.) Scott offers some examples: “From a revenue perspective, there's probably some element of pain, maybe key employees left.”
If you enjoy the audio medium, you’ll find a lot more in the podcast episode here.
Have a listen!
https://iamamillionairesonowwhat.libsyn.com/ep236-vulnerability-vision-and-the-eos-way
An invitation
This EOS mini series is sponsored by “Elevated Conversations” with me, Colleen O'Connell Campbell, a roundtable mastermind for co-founders and business owners who want a cash rich exit in the next five to 10 years.
If you’re in Ottawa, you may be interested to hear that I'm reintroducing “Elevated Conversations” which originated in 2018 where I brought together smart investors and business owners to talk about interesting topics in technology and finance that are disrupting our world. With COVID and the end of dinner parties, we moved to virtual roundtables and now I’m bringing back masterminds in person. Let me know via LinkedIn or email if you’re interested. The date is between the last week of October and the first week of November in 2022.