S7E18: How an Entrepreneurial Operating System Produces Greater Outcomes

Does your organization have an operating system that links your vision down to your employees' daily and weekly actions? Find out how many entrepreneurial companies and ministries are discovering how an effective operative system can lead to improved outcomes and impact. Doug Hall, whose consulting firm, Resources for CEOs, equips leaders to more effectively run their businesses and position themselves for growth, shares management framework and practical tools to keep your organization moving forward.

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In this episode:

• You’re a seasoned leader. Before you launched into consulting to equip senior leaders, you held key leadership roles in various technology companies. How’d you decide to move from leading corporate teams to stewarding your influence to help other leaders be more effective in their own leadership? (02:45)
• I grew up in an entrepreneurial family (03:53)
• I know that some BCWI certified organizations use the Entrepreneurial Operating System (or EOS) that you help organizations implement, but some of our podcast listeners might not be familiar with EOS or other management operating systems. Can you give us an outline of the EOS framework and how it can help people lead and manage for growth? (05:23)
• The book Traction, which is what launched EOS (05:47)
• "This thing in Traction, this thing adds on to what I already help business owners with. It creates a structure of leadership and management that we all have a way of operating our business. But it's like an intuitive, unconscious cadence and way of managing." (07:17)
• "So, I just fell in love with the structure. I fell in love with the concept. I started working with clients. I decided in early 2017, five years ago, I went and got certified" (08:45)
• So, between the two books and particularly the EOS is a system; it is a process. It describes what to do next, and it has a number of great tools. And we thought, “Wow, this is really helpful.” And it's been tremendously helpful for the last couple of years. (10:33)
• What are some of the common problems that you see senior leaders grappling with in running their companies? What are they looking for when they reach out to you for help? (10:50)
• Missing goals, falling behind on goals, lack of accountability, toxic person or wrong person on the bus, key hires that have gone wrong, founders putting in more hours and not freeing themselves up (11:33)
• One of the factors of a flourishing workplace that we highlight at BCWI is sustainable strategy. The EOS methodology equips leaders to have a sustainable strategy.  
• Let’s dig into what this looks like in terms of goal setting, both long-term and short-term. You advocate developing 10-year, 3-year, 1-year, and 90-day goals. How does an organization implement that kind of goal setting and what are the benefits? (13:18)
• "That's a big thing because as a founder, as an entrepreneur, as a visionary, whether you're in ministry or in a profit business or a nonprofit, the number one problem is we have that vision in our head, just the other people can't read our minds." (13:44)
• "So, the connection here that I want to say about business operating systems, and EOS does this as well as any, is connecting execution to strategy. It’s strategy execution." (15:29)
• A couple of years ago we started on this journey, and we went off-site and had the entire team, and we did some appreciative inquiry, kind of dreaming of the future (16:21)
• You work with senior leaders, and how does this management system play out throughout an organization? What are some key factors that help leaders make sure that everyone, including middle managers, frontline managers, employees, that they're all engaged and working toward a common vision and goal? (19:01)
• We work with a number of marketplace companies, and these principles seem to work and apply as well to ministries and nonprofits and schools and other types of organizations. So how do you see these tools and resources helping in those kinds of settings? (23:57)
• I think effective leadership and effective management comes literally from God's heart. It's a giving leader. It's an engaged leader. It's a servant leader. There’s a lot of different words that go around that. But the kind of things, what resonated with me as a Christian when I saw the system was this is, in a way, doing God's work to help people be more effective at reaching their goals. (24:35)
• You work with many company founders and senior leaders. You've already referred to a number. You also run your own business and have been in senior corporate-leadership role. So how do you manage your own time and energy? You know, and that's something that many of the leaders who are listening to our podcast oftentimes it's our energy that we need to manage even more than our time, according to a number of thinkers. So, what are some practices and habits that you've seen that really have sustained you over time, especially over the long term, and that you'd recommend to leaders that you advise? (25:47)
• "I think there's two secret weapons that have helped me a lot and I encourage everybody to think about. One is your mindset, and can you change your mindset?" (26:22)
• "Secret weapon number two is really simple: get more sleep." (26:43)
• "No man manages time. All we can manage is our actions and our decisions. So, choose wisely. We have limited time on Earth. Use that time well, manage our activities through time and space, pursuing really good goals." (27:44)
• "First off, you've got to have a winning strategy" (29:57)
• "The next one is a shared vision with the organization. If we don't get the vision all the way down to all of our team members, we're not guaranteed that we're pulling the oars in the same direction at the same cadence." (30:20)
• "The third thing is having the right people in the right seats on a great team" (30:29)
• The fourth one is hitting the right numbers. (31:01)
• And then last but not least, getting the right stuff done. We can't get everything done. And so, we break it down to a quarter at a time and say, “What projects do we need to add to the company?” (32:12)
• And then the number eight driver, it shows up in superior profits and cash flow. (32:25)

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