Top tips from Jeni Clift.
1. Know your limitations.
I think know your limitations is probably you know, just thinking through that, you know, why did we get that implementer if you are are super disciplined, and you can really dig in and put time aside and be really structured about it. You know, self implement, by all means, but as the business grows, and you know, we sort of, you know, where we come in as implementers, around that 10 staff, it’s the value of having an external facilitator come and work with you, we just knew that we couldn’t do it on our own.
2. Having a structure in it is better than nothing.
Having some structure in it is better than nothing. So yeah, it’s, it’s a just makes, you know, from my personal experience, it makes your business your life a whole lot easier having something like Eos, that just spreads that load and the clarity around the roles. And that’s going back to their accountability chart. If husband and wife particularly for Nick and I, we struggled for a long time around clarity of roles who did what we both did the things that we both love to do, and avoided the things that neither of us like to do. And then we got really upset at each other because we felt that the other one should do it.
3. Get that accountability chart.
So you can do it. I don’t like doing it. Either. You do it? Right. I want to do it, and all of that sort of stuff. So yeah, just get those foundations right. Get that accountability chart, get those rocks in place. You know, sticking on that focus day. Just makes business and life a whole lot nicer place to be.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, visionary, eos, numbers, rocks, scorecard, people, accountability, talk, implementer, started, leadership team, integrator, team, big, role, person, week, ideas, tools
Jeni Clift 00:00
When I’m working with my clients, it’s always next six to 12 months, don’t you know, don’t think about the past, don’t think about in five years time when the businesses, you know, four times the size in the next six to 12 months, what structure does the business need? And just keep reviewing it. I just strongly discourage is that the right term people to change it in between sessions. Let’s agree that this is for the next six months. And you know, unless something goes terribly wrong, let’s work with this. We’ve agreed as a leadership team that this is what we’re going to run with for the next six months.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:38
Welcome to the latest edition of better business better life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry-Taylor. And today, I’ve got our co host, Jenny cliff with us.
Jeni Clift 00:46
Welcome to the studio, Jenny. Thanks, Debra. Good to be here.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:49
Yeah. So as I think a couple months ago, we actually introduced Julie Ilic. And they’re going to be co hosting the series. We’ve been running through a few technical issues in the meantime, but Jenny’s got some really great guests lined up. And so we’ll be seeing more of those over the next few months, I believe. Yeah, for today, I’m actually going to quiz Jenny a little bit, because we did our Tips and Tricks series. And we had such a great response from that. And we’ve had a few more questions come out of it. So today, I just want to talk about some of the things that have come out of it and get Jenny to answer some questions for us. So, Jenny, one of the things was that, you know, people sort of say, hey, look, we’ve read the traction book, and there’s this great thing called the VTR, or the eight questions. And, you know, surely that’s the first place that I start? And we say, well, no, there’s actually a different way of doing it. But people don’t understand why. And I think that’s the, the easy go to is to go, Well, let’s start to these eight questions. But what what is the EOS proven process? And why does it work?
Jeni Clift 01:43
Yeah, it’s interesting, the, most people just want to get started, and particularly in the entrepreneurial space, we, we all just want to jump in your feet first and kick things off and feel like we’re making progress. So So I guess, as an implementer, it’s kind of about slowing down and putting those foundations and I always explained it, as you know, it’s been like building house, you know, you, you start you’ve got your block of land, you’ve demolished the old property that was there, or you’re starting afresh, and they come in, and they build all of those foundations, and send you a bill for a whole bunch of money, and you go out and look at it and think well, apart from a few pipes sticking out of the ground, that doesn’t look any different. So it’s that sort of price, it’s really, what we want to do is build those really strong foundations, and make sure that the leadership team really have the skills that they need to, you know, to underpin the business and the rest of the team and, and start the process strong. So we go through a few things like no hitting the ceiling, what does that mean? And that’s, you know, every person, every team, every, you know, it could be a department or it could be the whole business hits a ceiling where you get stuck, you don’t know how to get past whatever it is, it may be, you know, a person that, you know, they’ve just reached the end of their capacity, or, you know, maybe the products that you’re selling, or the, you know, the way that you’re doing things needs to change in a way. So building, you’re teaching the principle of hitting the ceiling, and then we teach some some ways of moving forward. We we look at the accountability chart, and really sort of look at that your what structure does a business need? And not as most of us do as entrepreneurs, who do we have, and then creating those roles, and I’m sure you’ve seen the same thing. I’ve got this great person who’s really good at x. So we’ll put out your create a roll for them. But it’s not really what the business needs. And we’re always saying, you know, let’s build the accountability chart for the next six to 12 months, it’s not set in stone, we went through when we started the EOS process in our business back in 2017. You know what it looked like, even in our first day, that focused aid was very different six months, 12 months and two years later. And then, you know, getting the as in our day together, we go through and build that accountability chart for the leadership team and then set the team off leadership team to go and build their own accountability chart with their own teams. We set some rocks, and that’s those, you know, setting those goals. And really, I view that in that first day as a bit of a learning exercise, teaching people how to set rocks that are smart, specific, measurable, attainable, or Achievable, Realistic, time bound, but also teaching some tools on how to get those rocks done, how to set something in the timeframe still got to do your job and, you know, manage your team and do all of the other things. So setting something you can actually achieve in that, you know, in that timeframe. Something that will move the business forward. But some tools to make sure that you’re allocating time each week towards getting that rock done because it’s so easy to go back and just get back into the weeds and not not get those done. And do what we did here, we got to the end of our first quarter and at you know, in each of our weekly alternatives bang, yeah, yeah, you know, rocks on track on track and week 11 of the 1213 week quarter, saying to the other people in the leadership team, does anybody remember what my rock was? Because I don’t want to have it actually started it yet. With a few tears involved. We teach the meeting pulse, and that is teaching the level 10 agenda, but also, what meetings does the business need? Who’s in them? How long do they go for? So really setting the pulse or the cadence of the meetings? And then we take a first shot at the scorecard. So you know, what, you know, using my analogy of, you know, you’re on a Greek island and on a Monday afternoon, yet they you know, somebody comes out with your, your margarita and your, your scorecard. It’s the only information you have in the business, what are those critical numbers you need to know? So it’s really setting those foundations and starting the leadership team thinking in a different way before you get into the next two days, which are that vision building and answering those eight questions. Yeah. And I think
Debra Chantry-Taylor 06:13
Gina kind of said it really well, you know, vision without traction is hallucination. And so our process is about actually instilling some traction, some discipline, some accountability, before we get into that sort of stronger vision building. And I guess, you know, a lot of clients kind of go, oh, but how can you possibly set rocks, which is your short term focus for the stuff that makes the business go better? Can you set them if you don’t know what the vision is? But the reality is these clients, they’ve been around for quite some time they’re established? They’ve actually got it. They’ve all got a vision, right? Absolutely. Yeah, particularly particularly well, or even sometimes it’s articulated, I have to laugh, because I’ve had a couple of clients where, you know, they’ll come in, they’ll go, you know, we’ve got, we’ve got a vision, we’ve got a mission state, we’ve got our core values, like, great, my life is going to be so much easier in this focus day. Let’s give it a go. And you go, right, can somebody tell me what our vision is? And they kind of go? Yeah, I think it was something about Yeah.
Jeni Clift 07:03
Does anybody remember? And yeah, we’ve got great values. They’re so strong, we’ve got 17 of them. Does anybody remember? And two people couldn’t remember what each
Debra Chantry-Taylor 07:15
other’s seven is by live exaggeration. But I’ve certainly had companies have come in to they’ve got nine kind of core values. And you go, well, that’s really, really great. But if you do ask the team right here, right now, who let’s face it is the the leadership team, therefore should be the people most attached to these values. What are they, they really struggle to come up with more than two or three? So yeah, absolutely. Okay. So this focus day is designed to set up the team for with all the really, really good tools that they need to be really good leaders in the business, and to take them forward. And the accountability chart, let’s talk a little bit about that. Because this is something that I think is quite unique to EOS. And I think particularly the fact that we have this thing called a visionary role, which I think I suddenly clicked for me a few few weeks ago, when somebody said to me that the thing that I love about EOS is I have got a role in this business now, that is really clearly defined. And that was the person who owned the business, which is often the visionary. So let’s talk a little bit about that. Yeah, that accountability chart, what’s the role of the visionary? What’s an integrator? What does that look like?
Jeni Clift 08:17
So the visionary usually is the owner of the business, it’s the person who it’s their baby, they’ve created the business, they’ve come up with this great idea. And you know, to provide their product or service, whatever that is, and then built a business out of it. So it’s that person that really thinks big picture, you know, sit to 30,000 feet, doesn’t do detail, has the big relationships. So the big clients, the big vendors, the you know, the people, the industry, peers, but it’s that person who, you know, when you ask them about their business, they can just talk for hours about it. But they you know, how they actually do it often they’re like, really, I don’t know, got people for that. And they’re really good at surrounding themselves with great people. And, and the other thing, they really drive the culture of the business, they set the tone of, you know, how their business does things and their day to day interactions, the people within the business. So in I love the term visionary, because it is it’s the person with that really strong vision of what that business is about.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 09:27
So quite often in businesses that we work with that visionary is actually wearing more than one hat, though, aren’t those their surroundings have all these great people and yet, they’re still trying to hold on to a lot of the day to day tasks. They’re still trying to actually run the business. What’s the danger of having a visionary kind of in the business of running the business?
Jeni Clift 09:46
So having been married to a highly visionary person who I’ve worked alongside for nearly 27 years, Nick and I would go off to a conference and industry conference and we would come I’m back to our office, and there would be nobody there. Like, it’s the old shooter cannon through the office and not your heat, anybody, our staff would just disappear for the first few days after we back came back. Because I’m visionary as well, not as highly visionary as Nick. But I’ve certainly had visionary traits, we would come back with these great ideas of all of these things that we could implement in the business. So we’d come back, and we would just derail all of our staff from whatever they were working on with all of these great ideas. And a highly visionary person, normally, within a couple of days, has forgotten about all those great ideas and moved on with even more great ideas. And one of Nick’s more famous ideas is he said to me, it came to me one day, so excited a few years ago, and he said, I think we should get a robot for the office. And I said, Okay, and what exactly what this robot do? So I have no idea, but it would be so cool. And it’s only, you know, it’s under $10,000. Okay, so why don’t you go and put a bit more thought and research into said robot? And we’ll talk about it later. And ultimately, the answer was no. Had he gone to our staff, which is what he always did prior to implementing that structure? Around the visionary, the integrator, the heads of departments, he would have gone straight to a few of our Tech’s sold this great idea of a robot, they would have gone off and started developing the robot, because how cool is it to be happy to to have a robot in the office when you’re an IT business? Not on the job, not supported our clients and got completely distracted with a robot? for absolutely no reason, like our business did not need a robot. So that’s the I guess, the threat of a visionary these great ideas. And when the owner of a business comes to you as an employee, and says, go do this, you do it, particularly if it’s fun. So a visionary can really be a big distraction, an organizational whiplash, you know, you’re going down this path, and then all of a sudden, you’re going down a completely different path. You’re not quite sure why, but the onus is, we are, so we are. So it’s all over the shop, and then you get this, you’re going back to what I started with about, you know, coming back from a conference and nobody there, people would go into hiding, when we came back from these conferences, because they knew we’d come back with all of these great ideas. And they were I think they were just over it.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 12:40
Yeah, because I know what it leads to is that, as you said, they’re going to jump when the owner says jump, and like I say how high and you see teams, even really long established teams that are working ridiculously long hours. And when you look into it, it’s because they’re always trying to execute on the latest, greatest idea that steer through, and they never quite get around to finish it for the next one is thrown at them the next one. And so they’re just almost like chasing their tail, the whole time trial and a
Jeni Clift 13:05
trial of destruction. Yeah, half British half finished projects and, you know, half baked ideas.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 13:11
So I think when we go when we go to businesses, and we actually say to these people, hey, look, we’ve got this box, it’s called the visionary box. And this is what you’re going to be doing, you know, you’re still gonna have those big relationships, you’re still gonna have those really big ideas. But you don’t need to get involved in the sort of the day to day running of the business or leading the team that’s going to be done by this integrator role. You can see them and what’s kind of light up and go. Either one of my clients or they say, well, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders that suddenly he didn’t have to do it all. Yeah.
Jeni Clift 13:40
And the integrator, which is you know, that, you know, every great visionary needs a great integrator. And the integrator is there, you know, they’re far more detailed. They’re more where the visionary is often quite emotional driven, not an emotional person, but driven on emotions and excitement and shiny objects. The integrator is usually more logic based. So, you know, they usually have responsibility for delivering on the business plan, and, you know, the delivering on the financial aspect of the business, special projects, leading the heads of the departments. And their job really is to execute the ideas of the visionary that have been deemed to be the way forward.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 14:28
So this was a sanitized process. That’s
Jeni Clift 14:31
a good word. I like that word. Yeah. And so what have I said in the integrator role for probably 10 years in our business with Nick as visionary? And he would come to me with his great ideas, and a big part of my role was to say no, or, actually, I really liked that idea. Nick, can you go away and put some more thought into it and come back sometimes he got went off on other tangents and didn’t. But you know, it’d be ah, you know, yeah, that’s a terrible idea. Nope, no, no, I like that one. So it’s just constantly listening. So the visionary can still come up with those great ideas, give them to somebody who actually listens, and then executes on the things that will move the business forward.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 15:14
And then, of course, that comes into structure of the having the rocks and being really laser sharp focused on what’s important as well. Because if you haven’t got that laser sharp focus, if everything’s important, it’s nothing’s important. Exactly, yeah. Okay. So this is one of the foundational tools that we use is called the accountability chart. I mean, it really is, as you said, we’ve got to think about structure first people Second, we’ve got to think very, very much what does this business need, and it is a document that changes, right, this is not something you kind of traditional organizational chart, here’s the, here’s the title, here’s the name of the person, and then almost that never really gets reviewed until we go through restructures and things. Whereas the accountability chart is really a living, breathing kind of document that helps people understand who is responsible or accountable for something, but it is reviewed on a regular basis, particularly in a high growth company, right?
Jeni Clift 16:02
Absolutely. Yeah. And it’s, and we went through this, you know, in probably in our first two years of implementing aos into our business, you know, what we set in the, you know, that first focus day was our second quarterly. So we went through the vision building process, and I think might have been sort of, you know, 190 days later, we looked at it and said, it’s, there’s just something not working here. So we spent quite a bit of time in that quarterly going through. And I think we can’t we probably got caught up being new to the process and learning and we diluted that to the leadership team. We had too many people on on that leadership team. So we said, Okay, how do we fix this? Because it’s just not working. And, you know, when I’m working with my clients, it’s always, next six to 12 months, don’t you know, don’t think about the past, don’t think about in five years time when the business is, you know, four times the size in the next six to 12 months. What structure does the business need? And just keep reviewing it? I disagree. strongly discouraged, is that the right term, people to change it in between sessions, let’s agree that this is for the next six months. And you know, unless something goes terribly wrong, let’s work with this. We’ve agreed as a leadership team, that this is what we’re going to run with for the next six months.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 17:27
Yeah. And it’s basically identified all the major functions. So really, that’s not going to change in that next six months. But but we do need to review it every six to 12 months, isn’t still right. Yeah.
Jeni Clift 17:37
And if somebody leaves, then normally at that leadership team level, if there’s a vacant role on the leadership team, the integrator steps in and fills that until you follow until until you fill it externally, internally. But the role doesn’t change. It might be a bit different person, but the actual role stays as it is.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 17:58
Absolutely. Okay, cool. So I mean, that’s, that’s one of the fundamental things I loved about it was the fact that it is it’s about accountability is it really clearly spells out what you’re accountable for? We do it based on the structure first and put the person there. And it means when you’ve got it fleshed out for the whole organization, anybody can look at the whole org chart and go, I need it. I’ve got an issue with customer complaints. Are that’s the person who’s accountable for it. And they can actually go fine. Yeah, they know exactly who is to talk to. Yeah, exactly. And then that tends to feed into one of our other foundational tools, which is the scorecard. Right. So the tell us a bit about this scorecard as part of the data component. Tell us a little bit about scorecards and why they’re important.
Jeni Clift 18:37
So the scorecard, some of some of the questions I get asked about the scorecard in our focus day, we set the scorecard for the leadership team. So you know, the owner of the business is on, you know, sitting on their Greek island, or whatever their happy place may be. And they get that scorecard on a Monday afternoon with their cocktail. They can look through that and say, everything’s on track. And I can get another cocktail or things a little getting a bit wobbly, I need to get on the phone, or Oh, my God, I need to book a flight home. So you really what are those critical numbers? So usually, it’s things like, you know, cash or bank, something around your sales pipeline. So I encourage people to look at, you know, what are the core parts of your business, and pull a couple of really key numbers, leading lagging numbers, that, you know, if these things are achieved, you know what the outcome will be. So if you need to bring in 10, new sales each week, then your pipeline needs to have 100 You know, it’s coming through that funnel, then that’s your number. So and if it’s, you know, your numbers 100 And you’re only hitting 60 or 70, week in week out because that scorecard gives you 13 weeks of rolling data, so you can see those trends. And you know, we had one situation in our business where a new person started in a In a leadership role and started playing the system if you like. So we then when we, we looked at it, and we there was peaks and troughs. And when you look back through our data, and all of a sudden it was just green all the time and doesn’t look right. So we dug into it found out what was happening, and then put another number onto the scorecard to make sure that the right thing was being done for the business and our vendors, because our, the person was not paying suppliers on time, in order to keep the bank balance looking good. And so we put, you know, supplier invoices overdue as another number on there. So what are those numbers that you can look at and know, as an overall big picture business as a whole, that you know, everything’s on track. And when it starts to go off track, you can do something straight away, because you’re looking at this every week, if you look at it, the end of the month, too late, you can’t change it, or at the end of quarter or the end of financial year even worse. And then your business will get to the point where every single person in the business has one or two numbers on a scorecard. So maybe the person who answers your phone, your off all calls answered within three rings. You know, so what are all of those numbers having a person accountable for them, so they may not be the person who complete the does all of the work behind it, but they’re the one who actually fills in the number on the scorecard. And, you know, it’s the old red and green, you know, did you meet target? Or did you not? And if you’ve got a salesperson who is not making the phone calls, or you know, following up on the leads at the stop, there’s no way they’re going to hit their numbers. So just gives you that visibility right down to the business. And I always describe the scorecard as it’s like shining a damn big spotlight into every corner of the business, and there is no way to hide.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 21:55
Yeah, no, I totally agree. And I think it’s kind of interesting to people think that a scorecard is like a dashboard, it’s kind of set in stone, and that’s always gonna be the same. But again, we work on this 90 day, Weldon, iOS, and actually, every 90 days, we’re looking at it and saying, Hey, this is what we were measuring last quarter, which is great. But what’s happening in the business right now. And so if you’re struggling with cash flow, for example, you might add an additional metric that will help you to understand where that is at for the next 90 days. And that becomes the focus for next 90 days. Or you might actually recognize that you’ve got trends in the business as of therefore, the sales number is not the same every single quarter. But you know, that quarter one is a big quarter, quarter two is a bit of a dip, whatever it might be. So I think that’s the important thing. Is it scorecards that they’re not just for the sake of kind of ticking a box? And going yes, we’re doing metrics is to really help you make business decisions based on data that helps you to do that. Yeah, absolutely.
Jeni Clift 22:48
Yeah. And I think that consistency, too, like, you know, all of these fancy dashboards, they show you right now, but if you want to know what happened last week, in the week before and the week before, you’ve got to go and look for it, where the scorecard you can look at it and say, you know, these are the peaks and troughs. You know, that number was was was doing really, really well. It was kind of climbing and now it’s starting to decline. What’s changed? Yeah. So it’s that visibility of a period of data that, as you said, can help you make good business decisions.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 23:23
Yeah, I love it to know, it’s actually it’s really, really simple. It’s really funny. I’ve got, you know, different clients have different sizes, different technological capability, shall we call it and I mean, some people have literally got, you know, proper dashboards, and they’re using software. And they’re tracking all of this and seeing the 13 weeks at one glance, other people have spreadsheets, and they’re just looking at a spreadsheet. And I’ve even got one client who literally just prints out, they have a printed out version of the scorecard. And they use a pink and a green highlighter to go green as untrap Pink’s off track whiteboards, big whiteboards, we saw one in our event center where a big whiteboard and that’s where the numbers went, which means we can easily a glance, see where things were at, which is good. Yeah, keep it simple. Absolutely.
Jeni Clift 24:04
I recommend that people don’t automate that process, whoever’s accountable for that number needs to go and actually fill it in themselves and take ownership. Because you get in and you go on and off. It’s right, it’s red, but you know, that’s automatic. It could be right could be wrong, who knows, not my problem. If you actually have to go and count the number yourself or find the name of yourself and put it in its red, you take it more personally, and take ownership of it. And that’s the point.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 24:33
And and the same within the actual level 10 meetings, I actually encourage the person who owns the number to be reporting on that number too, because there’s there’s certain psychology of like, okay, Debra, there’s sales figure that you’re supposed to have your 10 books sent out this week. It’s, I have to say, I only sent up one this week and then suddenly it’s becoming you know, it’s a real, it’s my number I have to own
Jeni Clift 24:54
and what we found through the process, and we pushed EOS down into our business pretty quickly. By I was going to say request of our staff, but it was stronger than that. They were like, you know, what is this thing we want to do it to let us in let us in. So we rolled it out very quickly. And what happened was when people within teams were not meeting their numbers, so you know, go around the sales team. Yep, I’m, you know, my numbers green, my numbers green or mines red, but it was red for the last four weeks, what are you doing? So it became that sort of peer group management and calling each other out and saying, Okay, how can I help you? I don’t know how to do this. Well, I can teach you that. Let’s do straight after this meeting. I’ll take you through it again. So it became that peer group management, and peer group pressure, like you said, of, you know, you don’t want to be standing up each week and saying, oh, you know, I have my numbers.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 25:45
Yeah. Yeah, that’s fantastic. Okay, so the other tool that you talked about was rocks and rocks. I mean, there’s there’s not a new concept, right? I remember seeing a Stephen Covey video. But it’s still it’s a very, very still, that’s the whole thing with Eos, right. Nothing in the US is actually new. It’s all very, very good, proven principles. But the principle behind it is that we’re, we’re laser sharp focus on the big things that will actually make the boat go faster. point us in the right direction. But how many is like an ideal number of rocks? In your opinion? Well, I think
Jeni Clift 26:21
it’s, is it a set seven each quarter and then not do any sudden? Just me. Okay, yeah. Okay, you can edit that bit. So, I, I don’t like people to have any more than three. A visionary none. Because they just don’t get them done. They, they will sign up to all of them and get that done. Normally. I can you do that? I can do that. I can do that. How many rocks? What rocks? is usually the question. Two to three. Yeah. Because you still have to do your job. You have to manage your team. You don’t want to be there 14 hours a day, you know, when everybody else goes, go to home, do some work on your rocks. Two to three. I kind of like to because you’re just setting people up to fail. If it’s any more than that. And everybody says hard, but it’s so important. You know, we have to get this done. Okay, so how in this quarter, it has to get done into quarter? How long have you need to do it? Four years? Right. Okay. So do you want to rethink that?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 27:29
Yeah. And I think also, it’s sort of it’s not, we’re not saying that if you get those two rocks completed, you can’t do more work. And it’s those two done first and once you can do something else, but yeah, so don’t add and subtract rocks. But at the end of the day, you set yourself up for success, like you said, being really realistic. But I’ve got five questions up here that I wanted to just quickly share about rocks. So the five questions we usually ask is, why do we actually need to do this rock? So you know, what is the value add to the business here by doing this rock? How will it make the business better? What does dumb look like? So if you’re gonna commit to a rock, how will the leadership team know it’s actually complete? I always say, what does success look like? When can I break open the champagne? I need to know what that actually looks like, you know, where does it fit in with a one year plan or a three year picture? So being really, really clear, this is about starting with the end in mind. So we’ve got a 10 year target a three year plan for your picture, and I want you to plan how does it kind of fit into that, you know, doesn’t have a folder that addresses significant issues that stops us to getting to our goals? If yes, what does it do? How does it How does it do that? How much time will it take to complete it either hours or days? So that’s a sanity check, isn’t it to kind of go actually, if you think on top of these rocks, you’ve got all your business as usual. And that’s going to take up 80% of your time. And you’ve probably got 20% to spend on this doing this rock. So what is the scope and the size of the work? And are we actually being realistic in terms of you know, how many rocks we set for ourselves and what the size is? And then finally, what are the major milestones and it can be mapped out to understand how to do it. Because I think you’re you’re going back to your original example, you get to the 11th week and people kind of go, I forgotten what the rock was about. Whereas if you had the milestones kind of mapped out, you could go okay, we’re at week four, we’re up to number two in the five milestones, we’re probably are on track.
Jeni Clift 29:15
Yeah. And I think you’re using one of the Eos software tools. And there’s milestones in there. It actually makes it easy for you if the integrator is running the meeting and you know, Debra, how are you going on that mark on that rock and you say, oh, yeah, it’s on track so well, but none of the milestones have been ticked off. Ah, okay. Well, I have done them. I just need to go and tick them off. I will get that done before the next meeting. Fantastic. Go you. Ah, yeah, I actually haven’t started well, it’s not on track. It’s off track. So again, it’s just creating that that accountability and that nowhere to hide. But it’s also the thought process of if you start that the thinking around that rock with What does done or success look like And then work backwards from there and create the steps. It’s easy to get into overwhelm, I’ve got this rock, I’ve got to get this big thing done in the next 13 weeks. I don’t know where to start, it’s too big. I’ll go and do something else. And then another weeks gone by another weeks gone by. So it’s just breaking it down into those chunk size bits. What can I do this week? And then what’s the next logical step, the next step, the next step? So it just sort of takes away that overwhelm?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 30:29
Isn’t it like a study plan? Isn’t it when you’re doing a study plan for your exams and things? Because I was totally things last minute. Okay. Excuse me, my apologies. Okay. So we’ve this, we’ve talked about, the first step is this focused on it really is about getting these foundational tool sets that actually when you leave that room, you’re going to start implementing some tools that are fundamentally make a difference to your business kind of immediately. We’re not averse to people self implementing, right? If you want to self implement, we’re absolutely fine with that. But there’s a definite advantage to working with somebody to go through this process. And you’ve been through it. And we’re now using somebody to actually help us with our sessions for our business as well. So what do you think? Why would you? Why would you choose to do it with an implementer, as opposed to just do it on your own.
Jeni Clift 31:13
So we had been looking for something for quite a while, and we tried various other things, you know, sort of competitors to Eos, we tried a couple of industry tools. The big thing, or two big things for us, one was discipline of actually setting aside those days to be working on the business rather than in the business. So we knew that having that implementer coming in on those days, sessions mean meant that we had to do it, we couldn’t cancel on postpone and just keep putting it back, or having done my rock. So let’s push it back two weeks, like that was going to make a difference. But for us, so it was that discipline, it was the knowledge, you know, you can read a book, and interpret in your own way, you can skip over the hard bits and pick the easy bits. So the cherry picking thing, which is a trait of a visionary, you know, do the easy stuff, and what you know, wait till I figure out the other stuff. So the two big things for us was that discipline, but but also the expertise, we knew we needed to bring somebody in, who would take us through and do it properly. Because we’d tried self implementing other things and waste, we said at the time, it didn’t work, we didn’t know how to make it work. And we didn’t want to make that mistake. Again, we committed to this and we wanted to do it properly. Because for I’d been in the general manager or integrator role, as we now call it, for 10 years, I’d been trying to get out of that role for nine years and nothing that we had tried stuck. So we just needed to do something different. And do it properly,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:54
properly. Yeah. And I think also, if you think about, I know, certainly the clients that I work with the visual is a very strong personalities, you know, that’s kind of the nature of a visionary. And if you try to do that yourself, or even if your integrator tries to do it, that can be that tendency, again of that the visionary says something and everybody else just agrees because that’s what the visionary said, whereas a facilitator, the we are, we can actually pick up on make sure that everybody gets a fair say in it, that we are actually fighting for that greater good, as opposed to just going along with what the visionary says,
Jeni Clift 33:23
And particularly in our case, was husband, a wife. Yeah, and, um, you know, so excuse me, our, the dynamics of us being married and working together for so long, both being visionary. And then, you know, we’d have conversations at home and you know, in the car and that sort of thing, and then sort of bring our team into somewhere down that conversation. So they didn’t have the backstory, the, you know, the thought process that we did. And we we recognize that that was difficult for our team to navigate. So having that dynamic for us, really, the EOS process really worked for that because we come together, we talk about things in that room together, rather than us just presenting it as a, as a as a product, rather than a discussion.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 34:20
Okay, good. Hey, look, I’m conscious that we’re coming to the end of the show that it’s always go so quickly. We’re gonna run a whole series of these. So we’re just you and I talk and answer some of the comments or questions or misconceptions or just giving some tips and tools around the US. Is there anything you’d like to kind of finish up on just to as a bit of a tip or a tool for the listeners?
Jeni Clift 34:40
Throw that one at me? Thinking about it’s good on you?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 34:43
Yeah. You’re welcome.
Jeni Clift 34:47
That’s what I was thinking. Yeah, I think know your limitations is probably you know, just thinking through that, you know, why did we get that implementer if you are are super disciplined, and you can really dig in and put time aside and be really structured about it. You know, self implement, by all means, but as the business grows, and you know, we sort of, you know, where we come in as implementers, around that 10 staff, it’s the value of having an external facilitator come and work with you, we just knew that we couldn’t do it on our own. So if you do have a bigger business, please reach out and talk to an implementer if you’re a smaller business, self implement, and if you’re wanting to staff start with Eos, you know, get some of those tools into place to start your business. Having some structure in it is better than nothing. So yeah, it’s, it’s a just makes, you know, from my personal experience, it makes your business your life a whole lot easier having something like Eos, that just spreads that load and the clarity around the roles. And that’s going back to their accountability chart. If husband and wife particularly for Nick and I, we struggled for a long time around clarity of roles who did what we both did the things that we both love to do, and avoided the things that neither of us like to do. And then we got really upset at each other because we felt that the other one should do it. I don’t like doing it. So you can do it. I don’t like doing it. Either. You do it? Right. I want to do it, and all of that sort of stuff. So yeah, just get those foundations right. Get that accountability chart, get those rocks in place. You know, sticking on that focus day. Just makes business and life a whole lot nicer place to be.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 36:46
Completely agree traction first. Yeah. Excellent. Okay. Well, Jenny, thank you so much for your time. If you want to find out more about Jenny and Nick and I, you can go to business action.com.au or business action.co.in, Zed, we’ve got a whole raft of information about the various services that we offer for established kind of growing businesses. Jenny, pleasure to talk to you, as always, and I look, we’ll look forward to the guests you’ve got coming up in just a little bit. But you’ve got a couple of really exciting guests. So I’ll just share that with us. Yeah,
Jeni Clift 37:13
So quite a few people aren’t going to be chatting with over the next few recordings, who are running EOS in their business. So you know, different industries, member of Entrepreneurs Organization, so a few er was around the round the traps, a couple of guys have written books that we’ll be talking about. So we’ll Scott who’s got culture fix, and but the one that’s I’m really looking forward to not that I’m not looking forward to those ones is Katerina pepper marker, who is a psychologist who works in the area of mental health in the workplace. So I’m going to record a couple of sessions with her the first one around what’s happening in the workplace. Now, you know, we’re talking, you know, all the mental health issues that are coming through after COVID. And people getting back into the office and those sorts of things around burnout and and just the different expectations of the different generations. We’ll do a second one that’s aimed really more at employers how to protect ourselves and our business, when there are claims, particularly false claims, which is happening quite a bit at the moment. You know, people going out on stress leave when they’re just, you know, people, you’re trying to hold somebody accountable, and they go out on stress leave and they are calling out bullying. So how to manage that in the workplace, how to protect yourself, how to protect the business, how to manage a situation like that if it’s happening for you. So I’m really looking forward to those. Yeah, those
Debra Chantry-Taylor 38:40
Are pretty great. Now, we do appreciate that you’re obviously in the middle of kind of moving house country than everything else. So I can’t be exactly sure when those will come out. But definitely keep an eye out for them. Go to better business better. life.co.in Zed, you’ll find all the information there. You can subscribe on various different podcasts. And it was and we look forward to sharing more of our stuff with you over the over the coming weeks.
Jeni Clift 38:59
Fantastic. Thanks, Debra. Lovely to have a chat.
Debra Chantry-Taylor
Thanks, Jeni.
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Debra Chantry-Taylor
Professional EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach
Professional EOS Implementer New Zealand
Professional EOS Implementer Australia
Professional EOS Implementer UK
Professional EOS Implementer NZ
