Traction Gino Wickman Quotes

Vision without traction is merely hallucination.

Clarify your vision and you will make better decisions about people, processes, finances, strategies, and customers.

Most people are sitting on their own diamond mines. The surest ways to lose your diamond mine are to get bored, become overambitious, or start thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. Find your core focus, stick to it, and devote your time and resources to excelling at it.

You will establish the three to seven most important priorities for the company, the ones that must be done in the next 90 days. Those priorities are called Rocks.

When everything is important, nothing is important.

Life is much easier for everyone when you have people around you who genuinely get it, want it, and have the capacity to do it.

People need to hear the vision seven times before they really hear it for the first time. Human beings have short attention spans and are a little jaded when it comes to new messages.

If you’re truly going to commit to building a great company, a strong leadership team, and getting the right people in the right seats, you must prepare for change on your leadership team.

Problems are like mushrooms: When it’s dark and rainy, they multiply. Under bright light, they diminish.

When more than one person is accountable, nobody is.

You can have one name in two seats, just not two names in one seat.

If you cannot risk, you cannot grow. If you cannot grow, you cannot become your best. If you cannot become your best, you cannot be happy. If you cannot be happy, what else matters?

The first element of marketing strategy is your target market, or “The List.” Identifying your target market involves defining your ideal customers. Who are they? Where are they? What are they?

No matter how difficult the issue is, you have to make a good business decision here for the long haul. If you have a wrong person in the right seat, ultimately that person must go for the sake of the greater good.

There are three stages in documenting your Way. First, identify your core processes. Then break down what happens in each one and document it. Finally, compile the information into a single package for everyone in your company.

you’ll be faced with two types of issues regarding your people. The first is having the right person in the wrong seat. The second is having the wrong person in the right seat. In order to gain traction, you’ll need to address both.

Most leaders know that bringing discipline and accountability to the organization will make people a little uncomfortable. That’s an inevitable part of creating traction. What usually holds an organization back is the fear of creating this discomfort.

Entrepreneurs must get their vision out of their heads and down onto paper. From there, they must share it with their organization so that everyone can see where the company is going and determine if they want to go there with you. By getting everyone on the same page, you will find that problems get solved more quickly.

STEP 1: IDENTIFY Clearly identify the real issue, because the stated problem is rarely the real one. The underlying issue is always a few layers down. Most of the time, the stated problem is a symptom of the real issue, so you must find the root of the matter. By batting the issue back and forth, you will reach the true cause.

Successful business owners not only have compelling visions for their organizations, but also know how to communicate those visions to the people around them.

All over the world, business consultants frequently conduct multiple-day strategic planning sessions and charge tens of thousands of dollars for teaching what is theoretically great material. The downside is that after making you feel warm and fuzzy about your direction, these same consultants rarely teach how to bring your vision down to the ground and make it work in the real world.

Each of your departmental heads should be better than you in his or her respective position.

Above all else, your leaders need to be able to simplify, delegate, predict, systemize, and structure.

By answering the following eight questions and filling out the V/TO, we will clarify exactly what your vision is. Let’s get started. The eight questions are as follows: 1. What are your core values? 2. What is your core focus? 3. What is your 10-year target? 4. What is your marketing strategy? 5. What is your three-year picture? 6. What is your one-year plan? 7. What are your quarterly Rocks? 8. What are your issues? Please note that it’s recommended that you try to answer all eight questions in a full one-or two-day off-site session.

Your company is open and honest. Any obstacles that stand in the way of achieving your vision will be apparent. Your job is to now remove these barriers and solve the issues holding you back.

Your ability to succeed is in direct proportion to your ability to solve your problems.

I would tell him to limit the company goals between three and seven, and each year we set goals, he would keep piling on more. When we were done, the company would have 12 to 15 goals for the year. Like clockwork, at the end of the year, they would accomplish very little and end up frustrated. Going into the third year, he finally had a revelation: They were taking on too much. With this awareness, we agreed that the team could choose only three goals for the

A similar common problem is trying to document every single little detail down to the nth degree. This is overkill. You just need to capture the basic steps in the process, because the real problem is that people are skipping steps, and not always on purpose. Festering problems then blow up weeks or months down the road. In the heat of the uproar, you treat the symptom and not the root cause, which was that someone skipped a step. There is always an uncomfortable laugh when I share this truth. You need to document the steps in the process at a very high level, with several bullets under each step, which are procedures. This way, you can make sure everyone is following the process.

You must build and maintain a true leadership team. 2. Hitting the ceiling is inevitable. 3. You can only run your business on one operating system. 4. You must be open-minded, growth-oriented, and vulnerable.

Accountability Chart, the ultimate tool for structuring your organization the right way, defining roles and responsibilities, and clearly identifying all of the seats in the organization. Unique Ability® + Accountability Chart = Right Seats

right seat means that each of your employees is operating within his or her area of greatest skill and passion inside your organization and that the roles and responsibilities expected of each employee fit with his or her Unique Ability®.1 This is a concept created by Dan Sullivan and is a registered trademark of The Strategic Coach, Inc. In the book Unique Ability, authors Catherine Nomura, Julia Waller, and Shannon Waller explain that everyone has a Unique Ability®. The trick is to discover yours. When you’re operating from within your Unique Ability®, your superior skill is often noticed by others who value it. You experience never-ending improvement, feel energized rather than drained, and, most of all, you have a passion for what you’re doing that presses you to go further than others would in this area. When this combination of passion and talent finds the right audience, it naturally creates value for others, who, in return, offer you greater rewards and more opportunities for further improvement. It’s like your personal core focus. When a person is operating in his or her Unique Ability®, he or she is in the right seat.

Successful business owners not only have compelling visions for their organizations, but also know how to communicate those visions to the people around them. They get everyone in the organization seeing the same clear image of where the business is going and how it’s going to get there. It sounds easy, but it’s not.

Successful business owners not only have compelling visions for their organizations, but also know how to communicate those visions to the people around them. They get everyone in the organization seeing the same clear image of where the business is going and how it’s going to get there. It sounds easy, but it’s not. Are your staff all rowing in the same direction? Chances are they’re not. Some are rowing to the right, some are rowing to the left, and some probably aren’t rowing at all. If you met individually with each of your employees and asked them what the company’s vision was, you’d likely get a range of different answers. The more clearly everyone can see your vision, the likelier you are to achieve it. Focus everyone’s energy toward one thing and amazing results will follow. In his book Focus, Al Ries illustrates the point in this way: The sun provides the earth with billions of kilowatts of energy, yet if you stand in it for an hour, the worst you will get is a little sunburn. On the other hand, a few watts of energy focused in one direction is all a laser beam needs to cut through diamonds.

If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.

the U.S. Small Business Administration purports that “roughly 50 percent of small businesses fail within the first five years.” In a study published by the Monthly Labor Review in 2005, economist Amy E. Knaup states that 56 percent of businesses die within the first four years.

I can’t tell you how many of my clients start out trying to be all things to all people. They say, “Oh, you need that? Yes, we do that,” and, “You want those? No problem.” Over time, though, they, their customers, and their employees become frustrated, and the business becomes less profitable. This helter-skelter method may have gotten you to where you are today and helped you survive the early drought, but to break through the ceiling, you have to create some focus.

In summary, successful businesses operate with a crystal clear vision that is shared by everyone. They have the right people in the right seats. They have a pulse on their operations by watching and managing a handful of numbers on a weekly basis. They identify and solve issues promptly in an open and honest environment. They document their processes and ensure that they are followed by everyone. They establish priorities for each employee and ensure that a high level of trust, communication, and accountability exists on each team.

successful businesses operate with a crystal clear vision that is shared by everyone. They have the right people in the right seats. They have a pulse on their operations by watching and managing a handful of numbers on a weekly basis. They identify and solve issues promptly in an open and honest environment. They document their processes and ensure that they are followed by everyone. They establish priorities for each employee and ensure that a high level of trust, communication, and accountability exists on each team.

It is less important what you decide than it is that you decide.” More is lost by indecision than by wrong decisions.

The real goal is 80 percent or better. If you’re above that level, you have a well-oiled machine with the traction you require. The highest score ever achieved is 88 percent, by The Benefits Company, a 10-person organization that is one of the best small companies I’ve ever seen. Rob Tamblyn, the owner and a pure visionary, had a vision to create the best service company in the benefits business. Since beginning The EOS Process, The Benefits Company has experienced 30 percent growth on average every year for the last five years. To say that it’s gaining traction would be an understatement.

It is less important what you decide than it is that you decide.

A Harris Interactive/FranklinCovey poll of over 23,000 employees in key industries and employed in key functional areas sheds a sharp light on this issue. The poll revealed that 37 percent of employees didn’t understand their companies’ priorities. Only one in five was enthusiastic about their organization’s goals, and only one in five saw a clear connection between their tasks and their organization’s goals.

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter

The written word. It should be clear, concise, and directly to the point. My dad is fond of saying, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” His point is this: Let every word tell.

What is vision? It’s clearly defining who and what your organization is, where it’s going and how it’s going to get there.

Once they’re defined, you must hire, fire, review, reward, and recognize people based on these core values.

Entrepreneurs must get their vision out of their heads and down onto paper. From there, they must share it with their organization so that everyone can see where the company is going and determine if they want to go there with you.

Above all else, your leaders need to be able to simplify, delegate, predict, systemize, and structure. To the degree that you and your team apply these five abilities, you will grow to the next level. Let’s take a look at them one by one.

organization

RIGHT PERSON, WRONG SEAT In this case, you have the right person (i.e., one who shares your core values), but he or she is truly not operating in his or her Unique Ability®. This person has been promoted to a seat that is too big, has outgrown a seat that is too small, or has been put in a position that does not utilize his or her Unique Ability®. Generally, this person is where he or she is because he or she has been around a long time, you like him or her, and he or she is a great addition to the team. Until now, you probably

WRONG PERSON, RIGHT SEAT In this case, the person excels at what he or she does, is extremely productive, and is clearly in his or her Unique Ability®. What makes this person the wrong person is that he or she doesn’t share your core values. While this obstacle may seem like something you can live with in the short term, that person is killing your organization in the long run. He or she is chipping away at what you’re trying to build, in little ways that, most of the time, you don’t even see. It’s that wry comment in the hallway, the dirty look behind your back, and the dissension that this person spreads.

What gets measured gets done.

4. Thou Shalt Not Rely on Secondhand Information You cannot solve an issue involving multiple people without all the parties present. If the issue at hand involves more than the people in the room, schedule a time when everyone can attend. Tyler Smith of Niche Retail calls these “pow-wows.” When someone brings him an issue involving others or secondhand information, he says, “Time for a pow-wow” and pulls everyone involved together and solves it.

Have everyone on the leadership team brainstorm what they believe to be the following: • The geographic characteristics of your ideal customers. Where are they? • The demographic characteristics of your ideal customers. What are they? (If you’re marketing business-to-business, consider characteristics such as job title, industry, size, and type of business. If business-to-consumer, then age, sex, income or profession.) • The psychographic characteristics of your ideal customers. How do they think? What do they need? What do they appreciate? With the answers to these questions, go to work on creating The List, which consists of the key contact information for each prospect. I won’t kid you—creating The List will take some work.

which you will complete at the end of this section. Most companies realize that the best way to reach their newly clarified target market is through referrals, using their clients to connect with their prospects.

As with all goal-setting activities, your 10-year target must be specific and measurable so that there can’t be any gray areas. You will know the right goal when you have it. It will be the one that creates passion, excitement, and energy for every single person in the organization whenever it’s repeated.

YOUR THREE UNIQUES Other common marketing terms for this are “differentiators” and “value proposition.” Plainly put, these are what make you different, what make you stand out, and what you’re competing with. If you line yourself up against 10 of your competitors, you might all share one of these uniques. Some of you may even share two, but no one else should have the three you do. You need to settle on three qualities that will truly make your company unique to the ideal customer.

what you’re creating here is focus. The most common mistake that most organizations make involves competing in too many sectors, markets, services, or product lines, and trying to be all things to all people. It’s a game you will not win.

My dad always teaches, “Never tell someone something you can show them.

How to Create Your Proven Process Step 1 With your team, illustrate on a whiteboard what you believe are the major steps in your proven process and then give each step a name. These major steps are the touch points with your customers when you interface with them. The rule of thumb is three to seven steps.

Give your proven process a name. If you cannot come up with a name, simply call it “Our Proven Process” or “The (your company name) Difference,” as many EOS clients do.

The fourth and final element of your marketing strategy is your guarantee. Think of what Federal Express did with overnight delivery: “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.

A guarantee is your opportunity to pinpoint an industry-wide problem and solve it. This is typically a service or quality problem. You must determine what your customers can count on from you. If you guarantee it, that will put their minds at ease and enable you to close more business.

Some businesses are not suitable for guarantees. Fifty percent of EOS clients do not have guarantees because they haven’t been able to come up with a great one that will drive more business.

Your guarantee has a secondary benefit. It forces all the people in your organization to deliver on it. That in turn forces you to look inward and make sure you’ve got all the right people, processes, and systems in place to do so. If not, you’ll be forced to improve upon it. Your client will never need to make good on that guarantee if you’re at your absolute best.

Brainstorm with your leadership team and list what you believe to be the biggest frustrations, fears, and worries for your potential customer when doing business with you. The ideal guarantee is backed up by a tangible penalty if you don’t deliver on it. Your guarantee must drive more business or enable you to close more of what you’re not winning.

With life and business moving as fast as it does in the 21st century, there is little value in detailed strategic planning beyond a three-year window. A lot can change during that time span.

It’s still valuable, however, to create a picture of the future organization three years out. This will accomplish two vital objectives. First, your people will be able to “see” what you’re saying and determine if they want to be part of that scenario. Assuming they do, if they can see the vision, it’s more likely to happen. Second, it greatly improves the one-year planning process. With the three-year picture clearly in mind, you can more easily determine what you have to do in the next 12 months to stay on track.

when you have finished setting your Rocks and all the dust has settled, you should all be united on what objectives take precedence in the coming quarter. The focus of the Rocks is what makes this process so productive. Most organizations enter the next quarter battling on all fronts. They make everything a priority and accomplish very little. By setting Rocks every quarter as a team, you gain considerably more traction and finally reach your goals.

Now that you clearly know where you’re going, you have to identify all of the obstacles that could prevent you from reaching your targets.

The more clearly everyone can see your vision, the likelier you are to achieve it. Focus everyone’s energy toward one thing and amazing results will follow. In his book Focus, Al Ries illustrates the point in this way: The sun provides the earth with billions of kilowatts of energy, yet if you stand in it for an hour, the worst you will get is a little sunburn. On the other hand, a few watts of energy focused in one direction is all a laser beam needs to cut through diamonds.

A Scorecard is a weekly report containing five to 15 high-level numbers for the organization. In the Data Component chapter, you will learn to create and implement this powerful tool into your company. It will enable you to have a pulse of your business on a weekly basis, predict future developments, and quickly identify when things have fallen off the track. Because you’re regularly reviewing the numbers, you’ll be able to quickly spot and solve problems as they come up as opposed to reacting to bad numbers in a financial statement long after the fact.

You are not your business. Your business is an entity in and of itself. Yes, you created it, but in order to find success, you have to turn it into a self-sustaining organism. Reaching the next level requires more than just a product or service, or a simple determination to succeed. You need skills, tools, and a system to optimize your people, processes, execution, management, and communication. You need strong guiding principles that will work for your company day in and day out.

Your processes are your Way of doing business. Successful organizations see their Way clearly and constantly refine it. Due to lack of knowledge, this secret ingredient in business is the most neglected of the Six Key Components. Most entrepreneurs don’t understand how powerful process can be, but when you apply it correctly, it works like magic, resulting in simplicity, scalability, efficiency, and profitability.

Due to fear and lack of discipline, the Traction Component is typically most organizations’ weakest link. The inability to make a business vision a reality is epidemic. Consider it a new take on an old quote: Vision without traction is merely hallucination. All over the world, business consultants frequently conduct multiple-day strategic planning sessions and charge tens of thousands of dollars for teaching what is theoretically great material. The downside is that after making you feel warm and fuzzy about your direction, these same consultants rarely teach how to bring your vision down to the ground and make it work in the real world.

Gaining traction requires two disciplines. First, everyone in the organization should have Rocks, which are clear 90-day priorities designed to keep them focused on what is most important. The second discipline requires implementing what is called a Meeting Pulse at all levels in the organization, which will keep everyone focused, aligned, and in communication.

Each of your departmental heads should be better than you in his or her respective position. Of course, you will need to give them clear expectations and instill a system for effective communication and accountability. Once you have the right people in the right seats, let them run with it.

Once your team is in place, each member needs to agree that the problems in the organization are also his or her responsibility.

Organizations usually expand in spurts, by smashing through a series of ceilings. Reaching the natural limits of your existing resources is a by-product of growth, and a company continually needs to adjust its existing state if it hopes to expand through the next ceiling. You and your leadership team need to understand this, because you will hit the ceiling on three different levels: as an organization, departmentally, and as individuals.

If you’re not growing, be it internally or externally, you’re dying. Most companies strive for external growth, but internal growth also leads to future greatness. In fact, most companies need to start with a focus on internal growth before they can even think about external growth. The paradox is that they will actually grow faster externally in the long run if they are focused internally from the outset.

Simplifying your organization is key. This entails streamlining the rules you operate under as well as how they’re communicated. The same goes for your processes, systems, messages, and vision. Most organizations are too complex when they begin.

There are really only a handful of core processes that make any organization function. Systemizing involves clearly identifying what those core processes are and integrating them into a fully functioning machine. You will have a human resource process, a marketing process, a sales process, an operating process, a customer-retention process, an accounting process, and so on. These must all work together in harmony, and the methods you use should be crystal clear to everyone at all levels of the organization. The first step is to agree as a leadership team on what these processes are and then to give them a name. This is your company’s Way of doing business. Once you all agree on your Way, you will simplify, apply technology to, document, and fine-tune these core processes. In doing so, you will realize tremendous efficiencies, eliminate mistakes, and make it easier for managers to manage and for you to increase your profitability.

You must have one abiding vision, one voice, one culture, and one operating system. This includes a uniform approach to how you meet, how you set priorities, how you plan and set your vision, the terminology you use, and the way you communicate with employees.

Imagine coaching a sports team with two distinct methods or running a country with two governments. When systems work at cross purposes, your company is the ultimate loser. You cannot build a great organization on multiple operating systems—you must choose one.

The late Dr. David Viscott, author of Risking, wrote, “If you cannot risk, you cannot grow. If you cannot grow, you cannot become your best. If you cannot become your best, you cannot be happy. If you cannot be happy, what else matters?

Do you see what I’m saying?

most entrepreneurs can clearly see their vision. Their problem is that they make the mistake of thinking that everyone else in the organization sees it too. In most cases, they don’t, and as a result, leaders end up frustrated, staff ends up confused, and great visions are left unrealized.

What is vision? It’s clearly defining who and what your organization is, where it’s going and how it’s going to get there. It should be simple to articulate your vision, because it’s probably already in your head. Unfortunately, if there are five people on your leadership team, there may be five different variations of the company vision. The goal is to get you all on the same page. To the degree everyone on the team can answer the following eight questions and absolutely agree, you will have a clear vision.

What are your core values? 2. What is your core focus? 3. What is your 10-year target? 4. What is your marketing strategy? 5. What is your three-year picture? 6. What is your one-year plan? 7. What are your quarterly Rocks? 8. What are your issues?

Once they’re defined, you must hire, fire, review, reward, and recognize people based on these core values. This is how to build a thriving culture around them.

Your job as a leadership team is to establish your organization’s core focus and not to let anything distract you from that.

When your purpose, cause, or passion is clear, you won’t be able to tell what business you’re in. You should be able to take it into any industry. This will also keep you from confusing it with your niche.

If you’re a golfer, you know that the face of a golf club has a sweet spot. While its actual size varies depending on the club, let’s assume it’s about 50 percent of the face. To the degree you hit the ball on the sweet spot, the ball goes farther and straighter, contact feels better, and you’ll score better. The same applies to your business. Just like a golf club, your business has a sweet spot, and now that you have clarified your core focus, you now know what it is. Assuming you stay in your sweet spot, which might be about 50 percent of your market, your business will go further and score better in terms of profitability.

That’s one of the main differences between a 10-year target and any shorter ones you might set. This is the one larger-than-life goal that everyone is working toward, the thing that gives everyone in the organization a long-range direction. Once your 10-year target is clear, you and your leadership team will start doing things differently in the here and now so as to get you there.

It is crucial to have a crystal clear picture of what you want to accomplish … Rivet your attention on that spot where you are to land at the end of your quantum leap

the Pittsburgh Steelers during their heyday in the 1970s. He said, “We made every decision like we were going to the Super Bowl,” and they ended up winning the Super Bowl four times. That is what every leadership team needs to do. You should make all of your decisions as though you are going to your own Super Bowl—as though you were achieving your vision.

The solve step is a conclusion or solution that usually becomes an action item for someone to do. The item ends up on the To-Do List, and when the action item is completed, the issue goes away forever.

Thou Shalt Not Rule by Consensus On a healthy team where the vision is clear and everyone is on the same page, eight out of 10 times, everyone will agree with the solution. However, sometimes they won’t, and someone needs to make the final decision. Consensus management does not work, period. Eventually, it will put you out of business. Not everyone will be pleased in these situations, but as long as they have been heard and if the team is healthy, they can usually live with it and will support the decision. From there, you must present a united front moving forward.

In solving an issue, you have three options: You can either live with it, end it, or change it. There are no others. With this understanding, you must decide which of the three it’s going to be. If you can no longer live with the issue, you have two options: Change it or end it. If you don’t have the wherewithal to do those, then agree to live with it and stop complaining. Living with it should, however, be the last resort.

The issue that you fear the most is the one you most need to discuss and resolve.