When I first started my business 15 years ago, we were constantly chasing new ideas. Every opportunity looked promising, and every conversation sparked something new. We were busy, but not always on the right things. There was success, but it also felt reactive and, at times, exhausting.
Our meetings reflected that. Agendas were long, scattered lists (when we had one at all). We talked about a little bit of everything, but rarely walked away with real clarity about what mattered most or clear action items for next steps.
After three different people shared the book Traction with me, I decided it wasn’t a coincidence and that it’d be a good idea to check it out. I was sitting on a beach chair on vacation, reading it, and found myself saying, out loud, “This is what we need!” Before I even got on the plane home, I had ordered a copy for everyone on my team.
At our next team meeting, my team hesitated to take this on. We already had a CRM and plans. It’s not like we didn’t already have systems in place. Plus, this is what we do with teams! Why do we need a new system? However, the more we learned about EOS, the more we realized the importance of moving forward with it.
What We Don’t Talk About
We spend a lot of time working with leadership teams on how they communicate, navigate conflict, and work through the issues that tend to stay just under the surface. We hold ourselves to that same standard.
And while team dynamics are critical for teams to address, we also can’t ignore the structure in which those teams operate. That structure includes how priorities are set, how meetings are run, how decisions get made, and how a team stays aligned over time.
It’s the part of the work that brings consistency. Without it, even strong teams can find themselves revisiting the same conversations, losing focus, or reacting instead of moving forward with intention.
I get asked about this more often than you might expect: How do you run your leadership team?
For us, EOS has been one of the tools that helps answer that question. EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) is a structured approach to running a business, built around a set of tools and practices that create a consistent way for leadership teams to operate. It includes a shared planning framework, a defined meeting cadence, and a common language for setting priorities and working through issues. At its core, it gives teams a repeatable rhythm for aligning on what matters, checking progress, and making decisions together.
In the spirit of full transparency, we do not follow EOS to the letter. Our team is small, and some pieces aren’t as useful for how we’re set up. But the EOS tools that we do use have made a huge difference in how we operate as a leadership team.
How We Actually Use EOS
Over time, we’ve figured out which parts of EOS truly support how we operate. Those are the pieces we’ve kept and built into our regular practice.
Here’s what that looks like in practice for us:
- We use the Vision/Traction Organizer (V/TO) to stay anchored. We revisit the V/TO annually, and then again each quarter, to make sure our priorities remain aligned with where we’re headed. It keeps us from chasing ideas that sound good in the moment but don’t move us toward our main goals.
- We set (and stick to) annual goals to force prioritization. There are rarely easy decisions. Clarity at the top helps us stay disciplined about where we invest our time and energy. We also clarify what we won’t focus on this year (a game-changer that helps us avoid chasing those shiny objects mentioned earlier).
- We set a small number of quarterly priorities (rocks). This took us a while to get right. Early on, we had too many, and they weren’t specific enough. Now we focus on no more than 5 rocks each quarter, and each ties back to one of our annual goals.
- Each quarterly rock has a clear owner, an outcome, a measure of success, and a timeline. This has been a big shift. It removes ambiguity and makes it easier to know if we’re on track or need to adjust.
- We run a weekly Level 10 leadership meeting with a consistent agenda. The structure itself is simple, but maintaining the same format every week allows everyone to contribute and arrive at the meeting prepared.
- At Level 10 meetings, we keep customer and employee headlines short. This has helped us avoid spending too much time on updates, leaving space for real discussion.
- We prioritize issues instead of leaving them to chance. We don’t overcomplicate it, but we are intentional about focusing on the most important issues rather than just reacting to the squeaky wheels or the fire of the day.
- We rate every meeting on a scale of 1 to 10. If someone rates it below an 8, they explain what would’ve made it a 10 so we can improve next time. The ratings for our meetings steadily improved after these quick conversations.
- We hold annual and quarterly meetings with a clear purpose. These give us time to step back, assess the business’s overall health, and make adjustments before things drift too far. These are the agendas where those shiny objects go. Sometimes months will go by before we look at those ideas again. If they are still “shiny,” we move forward with them thoughtfully and strategically.
None of this is complicated, but together it creates a clarity that helps us stay focused on the right things, week after week.
What We Don’t Do
Just as important as what we’ve kept are the things we’ve chosen not to do. EOS has many tools, and while several are useful, we’ve learned that trying to do everything can create more complexity than clarity, especially for a lean team like ours.
Here are a few things we’ve intentionally not built into our process:
- We don’t run separate weekly meetings for each core process. We’ve identified our core processes, but with a smaller team, splitting into multiple meetings started to feel siloed and inefficient. Streamlining has been more effective for us.
- We haven’t maintained an accountability chart. With a lean team, people wear multiple hats. We prioritize clarity in ownership without over-structuring roles that don’t reflect reality.
- We don’t assign a number to every person. While metrics matter, not every role in our business translates cleanly into a single measurable number, and we don’t force it when it doesn’t fit (something we learned after trying it for a few years).
- We don’t overcomplicate for the sake of the process. When something starts to feel heavy or unnecessary, we step back and simplify. The structure should support the work, not slow it down.
What EOS Has Meant for Us
When I think back to those early days with long agendas, too many priorities, and the constant pursuit of every good idea, the difference isn’t that we have fewer opportunities now. It’s that we have a way to decide which are valuable and what to do with them.
Using EOS has given us a structure that keeps us grounded in what matters most. It helps us stay focused when new ideas come in, provides a consistent way to work through issues, and creates a structure we can rely on rather than reinventing how we operate each week. There are still hard decisions and tough conversations, but we’re not starting from scratch every time.
This is what works for us, and I would never suggest that it would work for every team. At the end of the day, it’s not about having the perfect system as much as identifying the structure that will work best for your team to keep you focused, aligned, and moving forward.
Looking for more information about team development? Be sure to check out our Leader’s Guide to Building Stronger Teams.
