Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business

Are you a growth-orientated entrepreneur who owns a small to mid-size organization? ($2 million to $50 million in revenue with 10 to 250 employees) Then some of these problems should be familiar? - Lack of control over your time, the market and your company. - You are frustrated with your employees, customers, vendors or partners - You are not all on the same page. - Not enough profit. Growth has stopped - no matter what you do. - Nothing is working: You have tried various strategies and quick fix remedies. You're spinning your wheels, and you need traction to move again. If that describes you, then the author invites you to join him on a journey to better control your business and burst through the ceiling - to have better balance, better results, more fun, and more profitability. Briefly, his Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) has six key components that go right to the roots of the six most important aspects of the business and strengthens them, eliminating the symptomatic issues by solving the real ones. The principles are not new. What is dramatically new is the integration of these best practices into a complete system for organising and operating the business. It takes two to tango. The author provides the framework and a step by step guide. You and your management must provide the energy, the orchestration and implementation. 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 an honest environment. They document their processes and ensure that everyone follows them. They establish priorities for each employee and ensure that a high level of trust, communication, and accountability exists on each team." This book is practical, down to earth, and concise. It does not only provide the why and the what, but also the how. There may be differing opinions about what could or should be added to the system. However, on balance The Entrepreneur Operating System is comprehensive and solid. While the book is a 'do it yourself' manual you could add significant value to its implementation by using an objective third party to assist with the strategic review. This person need not be an industry expert. You just need someone with a good business brain and an objective view of the issues being raised. This could prove the difference between lots of chat and real strategic change.

So I have been in business some 16 years. I am an expert in my field and even on the bleeding edge of the field over the last few years. I have no formal business education so I studied for years at the school of hard-knocks to get my MBA. I've read every book I could get my hand on. I applied as much as I could, but my business struggled to grow to the size I wanted and needed in order to do the level of business I wanted to do. I've read most of Michael Gerber's book based on the E-myth concept which I was certainly in. So for 5 to 10 years I worked on the business instead of in it. The big takeaway from all the E-myth books and even several E-myth Worldwide training I did. However as much as I understood the importance of processes and delegating and managing better I still struggled. Then I had a friend recommend I read Traction and the partner book Get A Grip. WOW! This stuff really made it all click. The years of business study are all now being applied in a simple and manageable way. In the first 30 days of being introduced to Traction, I read it, listened to the audio version twice and read Get A Grip and listened to half of the audio version currently. On top of that I started applying the strategy to my business. I have never been more focused and more clear about how to hit the big future goals I am going after. I know that over the next 50ish days (of Q4 year end) we will have this system up and running and my business will be in a place it has never been before… accurately predicting future projections, solving real problems and issues forever and growing at pace that we've never experienced before. I've read Good To Great a few times and you know really struggled with figuring out how a small business like mine could define and create the "right seats" so that we would understand how to attract and keep the "right people" in those seats. Although I didn't get this from Jim Collins book, the theory made sense. Implementation on the other hand was the challenge. Traction took the theory of Good To Great and made it applicable for me. Now granted I also am now working with EOS Worldwide to roll-out these strategies faster, but that is the thing… Traction is all about application. The book is titled Traction for a reason, reading opens your eye to more than just business theory, it also delivers the tools you need to get traction. At least for my company it seems to be. I have only been at this for 30-40 days and things are sick. I mean we are seriously getting TRACTION! I can't wait to see where we are at in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, and 10 years. At this rate the future is looking pretty darn bright. If you are a small business owner or small CEO that is frustrated with your company and feels like you've done it all and wasted a ton of cash and time trying every business theory and concept that came along and have little to show for it, then you may want to read Traction. This is the best damn business book I have read EVER! Only because it is real world and it give you more then theory, it actually gives you the tools you need to run and manage your business, your people, your clients, your profits and even your personal life (if you're working like a dog and missing family time, this book will help you get control of your personal life as well)! I highly recommend this book to anyone running a business that feels out of control.

Love this book and how actionable the process is! Its easy to follow and uses common sense to align organizations. Definitely a system I can implement

My CFO recommended Traction to me. It's all about helping business owners and entrepreneurs get a better handle on running their companies. The core idea is the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) - a set of tools and principles to help make your operations more efficient, manage growth better, and overcome any roadblocks in your way. The writing style is pretty straightforward, which I appreciate. No beating around the bush. It's broken down into chapters covering different components of EOS: Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process, and Traction. Going through each one systematically lets you pinpoint your company's weak spots and apply specific fixes. But the real strength is how practical it is. There are exercises, checklists, real-world examples - stuff you can just dive right into at your own company. I'd definitely recommend giving it a read if you're looking to bring more discipline to your business operations. It's useful for companies struggling to scale up or needing a solid foundation to manage growth without losing control.

I found Traction to be the book I recommend to other business owners the most. I consider it the best how-to, tactically book on running a business I’ve read. I’m an entrepreneur in the advertising technology, ad agency, real estate investing, and author space. I found Traction and EOS to be applicable in all of my areas of focus.

Before reading, I didn’t really understand why this book is called “Traction.” Traction is the grip that tires have on a road or other surface. I know it also says “get a grip on your business,” so it almost makes sense — but the act of “getting a grip” usually involves imagery related to hands, not tires. It didn’t take long before I started to understand: It’s called “Traction” because it’s going to help us stop spinning our wheels as an organization and get somewhere. This book was recommended to me by multiple people separately as I discussed struggles as a manager where my team always had our ducks in a row, but then would get bottlenecked and held back whenever we needed another team’s help with a project. There was a lot of “hurry up and wait” going on, where my team would finish our parts of a project and then get stuck waiting for others who viewed their own projects as higher priority. The real problem was disorganization and a lack of communication from the top down. Everyone had a different idea of what the companies top priorities are or should be. Then the CEO read this book and started making changes based on it. Many of the changes aggravated or upset me, from pulling the executive team aside for a full week to rewrite our core values while I was trying to get the ball rolling on 4th quarter marketing plans to firing people who I didn’t think deserved to be fired. Then I read this book and I now understand what’s happening, including the firings. Did they “deserve” to get fired? In most cases, no. But they were all cases where someone was either not quite the right person for the job or we didn’t really have a need for their skill set and it was a waste to keep them on payroll for sentimental reasons. Now I feel I should clarify this is NOT a book about firing people lol that’s just an example of how I witnessed my employer implementing some of the concepts in the book. No, Traction is a book about getting your organization organized, getting everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) on the same page and focused on the correct priorities, and fostering healthy communication between teams… And this description barely scratches the surface. Most “business books” I’ve read are full of fluff and often not even good fluff. Traction isn’t like that. Every chapter contains legitimate value and it lays out a system that will help your organization stop spinning its wheels.

Very well written. This book explains the EOS process so that it is easy to understand. I recommend this book to anyone working to get their organization on track

The book has been very valuable for us to better structure and organize our business. I've been running my business for 25 years and now find that we have more business than we can handle and have been forced to become more efficient. This book provides guidance. The first thing Monday morning each week, the staff of my small business and I meet for an hour and go through the 8 questions (p. 34 of the paperback version). The questions are: 1. What are your core values? 2. What is your core focus? a. Why does our organization exist? What is its purpose, cause or passion? b. What is our organization’s niche? 3. What is your 10-year target? What is our Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)? 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? We discuss each question and develop concise answers. We've been doing this for a month and are on question #3, setting our 10 year goal. The book provides useful ideas for addressing each question. It has been very helpful. Everyone in the business is going in the same direction and we now have a context for making decisions. For example, "Professionalism" is one of our core values - so when we recently evaluated a software system, we agreed that we should use the version that makes us look professional... I know that there is much more to being professional, but the term now has common understanding among me and the employees. That's valuable. Ultimately one must actually do the work described in the book. We've found this to be a very helpful guide. Also, to be honest, I've just focused on the 8 questions because those seem to be the most immediately applicable. We're reading the book as we progress through the 8 questions.