In Gino Wickman’s book Traction on the Entrepreneur’s
Operating System, toward the end of the book, the EOS tools are described in
the order of recommended implementation, and they are *not* in the same order
of layout in the book itself.
Specifically, before even considering the Vision Traction Organizer,
Wickman advises implementing four other steps, the first of which is the Accountability
Chart.
Why this order? Why not start with the Vision Traction
Organizer, which should align everyone toward the same common goals with the
same common values?
The key to that answer is
hidden within the question. Specifically
“align everyone,” emphasis on the “everyone.”
If you don’t have the
right people in the right seats before you start the work of alignment, what
exactly are you going to accomplish? Basically
you’re setting yourself up for rework, which fellow lean thinkers would agree
is not advisable.
In this case, the “rework”
will be that once you do get the right people in the right seats, you’ll have
to redefine the vision, values, core focus, market niche, 10-year, 3-year,
1-year plan; all the aspects of the V/TO.
So the right people have to be there first. To quote Wickman, “The reason we start here
with every client is that the chart goes to the root of most issues. First, you need to take a big step back and determine
the right structure for your organization.”
In practice, I will say,
this is definitely more challenging than it sounds. The greatest challenge that arises in many
companies is whether the current personnel can or should be the ones to take
the organization to the next level. Specifically,
who goes and who stays.
One company with whom AJC
engaged with several quarters back knew they needed to make some drastic
changes in one of their core functional groups.
They had work in progress, but it seemed to be stalling, and the leader
of the group always had a ready explanation.
Unfortunately, “explanations” become less convincing the more frequently
they are given; at some point work actually has to get done. After running a “blitz” style project to
identify how to get out of this rut, the organization armed the leader with
specific action items and was even prepared to provide outsourced assistance to
accomplish them. Unfortunately, the
leader did not quite “get it” – as in, did not fully understand why moving
forward in this fashion was important, and ultimately the CEO of the company
was forced to make a change.
Unfortunately, it took several months to get to this point even after
the blitz project work was done, and that was time wasted toward real progress
for the company.
How could this type delay
be avoided? One piece of advice that
seems to work well when considering whether current personnel are in the right
seats is to create the Accountability Chart *without* names at all – and consider
what the roles/responsibilities need to be for the next 2-3 years of desired growth. Once this is done, assessments of current
personnel with respect to skillsets and GWC (Get it, Want It, Capacity to do
it) can be created. Finally, pair up the
people to the roles and determine where these match well, where there needs to
be shifts to other seats, as well as who is not going to be a fit for the organization
moving forward.
All of this does take
time, however, and as human beings, we seem to naturally want to “give people a
chance to prove themselves.” However, it
is very difficult to move forward to the Vision/Traction Organizer if this has
not yet been done because 1) the right people are not going to be involved and
it will need to be redone or at least revisited, and 2) the *wrong* people may
be around to adversely affect the V/TO, which could steer the company in an
undesirable direction.
The thing that Traction as
a stand-alone book does not address very well is just how gut-wrenching this process
can be. While it is definitely the right
thing to do, and moving forward without the right team in place does not make
sense, prepare to spend some sleepless nights figuring out how to do this with
team members that are good people, but just not the right people for the
organization at this time. One truly needs
to believe that, in the long run, even a complete separation will be best for
everyone.
Read
this article and more on AJC’s blog, and sign up for our newsletter online at: http://andreajonesconsulting.com/blog.aspx
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