“Goals are set to be achieved.”
-Gino Wickman, Traction
In continuation of our blog series covering Gino Wickman’s Traction, this week we will address the Vision/ Traction Organizer (V/TO) portion of the text. Our last post covered how to establish your core focus and values.
The Vision/ Traction Organizer (V/TO) is a primary tool used in Traction that helps set up the foundation of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) Process. You want your employees to share your vision and the only way for them to share your vision is by explaining it to them. From here, you can determine if these are the right people you want around to accomplish your vision and to make your business a success.
Although you, the business owner, are the one who came up with your vision, be open. As pointed out in the text, if an employee has insight on your vision, be it positive or negative, it shows involvement and interest.
Wickman states that your employees need to hear your vision stated 7 times before it really hits home. The repetition will show how serious you are about the vision and that is crucial to your company’s purpose and direction.
When it comes to communicating your vision to your employees, the book recommends a simple three-step process:
– Have a kickoff meeting to announce your Vision (V/TO). Make your core values (discussed in the previous blog post) clear, and provide plenty of time for Q&A.
– Every 90 days, go over your V/TO again to review successes, failures and general progress. You can review and establish new Rocks, defined in the text as “clear 90-day priorities designed to keep employees focused on what is most important.”
– Set new Rocks for each department and review your V/TO again.
Chapter 3 of Traction not only covers the present with things like defining your core values and focus, but also addresses your future by having you plan what you want your future to be in quarterly, one, three and ten year increments.
Planning the future of your company in such various time increments can seem daunting, but by following the recommended steps, you’ll come up with a clear path that you, your employees and customers can easily understand. Realistic goals are to be set with a corresponding budget in mind. Bullet points are recommended for organizing the thoughts of you and your leadership team to keep things clear and orderly.
A major part of planning out the next few years for your business involves “Rocks,” which Wickman defines as “clear 90-day priorities designed to keep employees focused on what is important.” The text says to set Rocks quarterly to help move things along to achieve your desired goals. As said in the text, “goals are set to be achieved.”
With the future in mind, you and your leadership team should be thinking of what obstacles may come between your business and success. This requires an open, honest dialogue. List your anticipated issues so that when they arise, you are better suited to address them.
Now that you have established your core values and focus, the desired future for your company, the next step in completing your V/TO will be to complete your marketing strategy, which we will discuss in the next post in this series on May 26. Stay tuned!
Traction by Geno Wickman is available on Amazon, iTunes, Barnes & Noble and your local library.
We want to know:
Are you working on creating Rocks for your company and your team? What sort of Rocks are you setting? Let us know in the comments!