Predicting is Finding Your Way Through the Jungle
Apr 07, 2020 by Roger Scherping
Gino Wickman spent many years consulting at small companies. He worked with thousands of businesses and every type of entrepreneur or business owner. In his experience he found that all small companies had basically the same problems. Regardless of their industry, they were all struggling with the same issues. Wickman grouped their problems into six areas: Vision, Data, People, Issues, Process and Traction.
Since he knew most small business owners have never been to business school, he knew they didn’t necessarily have the background to solve every problem they might encounter. He knew there was a real opportunity to develop a simple process or set of tools to help them solve the issues that plagued every small business.
What Wickman did was create a set of best practices in each of these six areas. He created forms and processes for dealing with the issues he saw his clients had. He then assembled all of those forms and processes into what he called the Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS). In 2007 he wrote a book called Traction®, which explains the EOS process in great detail. EOS has since been adopted by thousands of small companies worldwide. Business owners and managers are finding EOS a great way to keep everyone focused, hold people accountable, move the business forward, and give them back some of their time.
I am a big fan of EOS, and I consult with lots of small businesses. I always make sure that my clients start using some of the most helpful EOS tools right away. I know that these EOS tools can quickly help move a company forward because I’ve seen firsthand the impact that they have, especially at a small company that is struggling.
In Traction Wickman says that there are five skills that every small business owner or manager needs to master. They are:
SIMPLIFY – Remove all complexity from your operation. Most organizations are more complex than they need to be. Simplicity means better results.
DELEGATE – If you are ever going to be able to do the things that you do best and that will move the company forward, then you need to delegate most of the rest to other people on your staff.
SYSTEMIZE – Identify the core processes that you need to make your company function, and then document those processes clearly and simply and make sure that everyone is following them.
STRUCTURE – Structure your organization properly. Reduce complexity and create accountability.
PREDICT – The fifth essential skill is predict. Wickman says that you need to learn to do both long-term and short-term predicting. Short-term focuses on the immediate future and learning to solve – once and for all – the issues that plague you and your team every week and take up lots of your time.
Long-term predicting means 90 days and beyond. Wickman says, “To do [long-term planning], your leadership team has to know where the organization is going and how you expect to get there.” He uses the example of a group of workers cutting a trail through a jungle. Unless someone climbs a tree once in a while to double-check that they are still on track, they may end up cutting a zig-zag through the jungle instead of a straight line.
This type of long-term predicting is what ProjectionSmart Growth helps you do. Growth helps you do a 12-month projection of where your business is going. That projection becomes the plan that you intend to follow. Growth helps you “climb a tree” every month to look ahead and see what path you’re on and where it’s taking you.
And like EOS, we have made this process simple. We know that most business owners don't have accounting backgrounds, and we created something that they could do themselves, without paying a CPA to do it for them.
Some of our customers have called Growth their “crystal ball” because it helps them see the future. Of course, no one can see the future with any certainty, and a projection is just a projection. But having a plan is the first step in being successful. As the saying goes, “If you don’t know where you’re going, then how will you know when you get there?”
Just saying we want to succeed isn’t enough. You need a clear picture of where you intend to be in 12 months. Of course, you may not end up exactly where you planned because things happen along the way (viruses, recessions, etc.). But along the way your plan helps you see where you’re headed and keeps you on track.
Try out Growth for free and let it help you plan your future. Email me if you have any comments. I’d love to hear from you.
The Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS and Traction are registered trademarks of EOS Worldwide.