Is Your Company Fat?

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Is your company fat? That sounds like an odd question, doesn’t it? I’m not talking about people – I’m asking about your company, the organization as a whole.

What are the days like at your company? Are you running around putting out fires all day? Do you have 15 new ideas about what other product and/or service you and your team can provide? Does everyone who contacts your company sound like the best customer ever? When a customer requests something outside your actual product or service do you struggle to figure out how to meet their need? Are you overloaded with information? Is there someone (or maybe several someones) in your company that is hugely productive but is a challenge to work with? Is it difficult to hold people accountable? Does everyone know exactly where the company is going and are they working toward that goal every day?

If you are honest with yourself, you probably recognize just about every scenario in the preceding paragraph. So what causes this fat company? It could be several issues or a combination of issues. For example, there could be multiple operating systems in place – marketing operates on one system and finance uses another. This creates silos within the company and confusion between departments.

Perhaps there aren’t any processes in place or they aren’t complete. As a result, your team operates as individuals – they all provide customer support, or conduct sales calls or hire new team members in different ways – achieving different outcomes.

The company leaders may have diverse concepts of what the company vision is; therefore, each division operates the business from a slightly different perspective and the outcome is inconsistent. Maybe the lines of communication are unclear and no one is quite sure when they hand off a project to another division.

The outcome of being fat is that the company succeeds in spite of itself. As EOS® implementers, we see this frequently. And we can help by implementing a simple set of holistic tools that strengthen the Six Key Components™ of any business:

  • Vision
  • People
  • Data
  • Issues
  • Process
  • Traction

These Six Key Components™ provide simple, yet powerful ways to gain more focus, growth and success in your company, and are the basis for Gino Wickman’s book, “Traction.”

In his book, Gino explains how The Entrepreneurial Operating System® can help business owners achieve the success they’ve always envisioned. I’d like to offer you chapter 1 of “Traction” as a free download. You’ll have access to the reader reviews, the table of contents, the introduction, and the first full chapter. It’s an excellent opportunity to learn more about EOS®, and how it could benefit your business.

If you have questions about the EOS® process, The Six Key Components™, or “slimming down” your company, please fill out the form below to request a free, 15-minute phone consultation with me. No strings attached and no high-pressure sales. Our conversation will center on your business’s needs, challenges and questions. Together we can determine if EOS® is the answer you are looking for.