It’s true. The longer you let bad habits grow, the more difficult they are to uproot.
Sometimes we don’t try to change bad habits in our companies because we are too busy dealing with other issues. Maybe the habits don’t seem bad enough or serious enough. Or maybe it’s just the way we’ve always done things, and now the bad habits just seem normal.
But bad habits do hurt your business. They cause inconsistency, inefficiency and confusion. To break these habits, your leadership team must define the systems that make up the foundation of your business. The Entrepreneurial Operating System ™ refers to this foundation as your core processes.
Identifying your business’s core processes is the first step in eliminating your bad habits. The core processes will establish rules, guidelines and expectations that everyone can follow, and that turn those actions that used to hurt your business into actions that make it thrive.
Identifying your core processes should be a leadership team effort. Each company’s core processes will look a little bit different or may have different names, but they typically include:
- The HR process
- The marketing process
- The sales process
- The operations process
- The accounting process
- The customer-retention process
Once you’ve identified your core processes, it’s time for the appropriate manager to document the details. But the result of the documentation is not the creation of a comprehensive policy and procedure manual. Instead, what is formed is a simple, high-level bulleted list using what EOS calls the 20/80 rule.
The 20/80 rule means to document the 20 percent of your processes that produce 80 percent of the results. You’re not writing down every detail or scenario. You are covering the basic steps that is easy for your employees to understand and follow.
Training your employees on your core processes and documentation is the final step. What results is a consistency throughout the company. Management is simplified, bad habits are broken and your company is now prepared to scale and grow.
With EOS, your company’s bad habits can be broken. And you can enjoy the clarity and direction you and your managers work so hard for.
Do you need help breaking a bad business habit? If so, we can help.
About EOS
EOS is a holistic management system with simple tools that help you do three things we call vision, traction, healthy. Vision from the standpoint of first getting your leaders 100% on the same page with where your organization is going. Traction from the standpoint of helping your leaders to become more disciplined and accountable, executing really well to achieve every part of your vision. Healthy meaning helping your leaders to become a healthy, functional, cohesive leadership team.
