The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS): what it is, and whether it fits an advisory agency

What EOS is

EOS stands for Entrepreneurial Operating System. EOS Worldwide, the company behind it, calls it a practical system for getting a leadership team aligned and moving. Gino Wickman created it in the early 2000s, published it in Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business in 2007, and co-founded EOS Worldwide with Don Tinney in 2008 to spread it through a network of coaches.

EOS is a proper noun, a specific system with its own names for things, and the EOS Model, the V/TO and several other names are registered trademarks of EOS Worldwide. Advisor OS isn't connected to EOS Worldwide. We explain the model here because agency leaders and firm founders ask us how it would work in an advisory business, and what it leaves out.

The idea at the centre is simple. A leadership team agrees where the business is going, picks a few priorities every 90 days, watches a handful of weekly numbers, and solves problems at a fixed weekly meeting. The tools make each of those habits concrete.

The six key components

EOS says every business has six components, and that the business gets easier to run as each one gets stronger. The table puts EOS's description of each in our words, then what it means inside an advisory agency.

The tools in one place

EOS Worldwide's glossary defines each tool. Here are the ones an agency leader meets first.

The rhythm around the tools has three speeds. The Level 10 Meeting happens weekly. Quarterly Pulsing is a full day every 90 days to review the quarter and set new Rocks. Annual Planning is a two-day session once a year to refresh the V/TO and set the one-year plan.

How the weekly meeting runs

The Level 10 Meeting has seven parts, with times set by EOS:

Most of the time goes to solving problems. Reporting is cut to five minutes a section, so the meeting can't turn into a round of updates.

Applying EOS in an advisory agency

The tools carry over well. The work is in choosing what goes on them.

A scorecard for an agency

EOS wants numbers that predict the future, so lean toward activity over production. Here is an example scorecard for an agency of 20 advisors. Each number has one owner and a weekly goal:

• New contacts made across the agency
• First appointments booked
• First appointments that actually happened (the show rate)
• Cases closed
• Advisors who logged no activity this week
• New advisors in their first 90 days who are behind their activity plan
• Servicing requests open for more than five working days
• Recruitment interviews held

Production still matters, but it arrives too late to act on. By the time a month's cases are counted, the appointments that would have changed it were missed weeks ago.

Rocks for a quarter

Rocks are one-off projects that finish inside the quarter. Examples for an agency quarter: "Every new advisor has a 90-day plan and a weekly one-on-one", "Appointment confirmations sent the day before, for every advisor", "Servicing requests moved onto one shared list". Each has one owner on the leadership team and a done date inside the 90 days.

Seats on the Accountability Chart

A small agency often has the leader sitting in four seats: leader, recruiter, trainer and the person who handles every complaint. Drawing the chart makes that visible. It also shows which seat to fill first when the agency can afford help. Our guide to roles and responsibilities goes further on this.

The five frustrations EOS is built for, in an agency

EOS Worldwide names five frustrations that push leadership teams toward the system as a company grows. Here is how each tends to sound in an advisory agency.

• Control. You work longer than you want and the business still depends on you. In an agency, every case question and every recruit interview ends up with the leader.
• Profit. The business doesn't reliably make enough to invest in growth or pay you what you'd like. In an agency, production swings from month to month, so a servicing hire or a recruiting push keeps getting postponed.
• People. The team isn't on the same page and you end up refereeing. Managers run their units on different rules, and advisors go around them to you.
• Hitting the ceiling. Growth stalls and nobody can say why. Headcount stays flat because recruits leave about as fast as they join.
• Nothing is working. You've read the books and been to the workshops, and nothing sticks. Last year's planning day produced a deck nobody opened after March.

EOS Worldwide says the system works best for entrepreneurial companies of 10 to 250 employees with a leadership team that will use the tools every week, and that it isn't software, a one-off planning session or a quick fix. On our reading, an agency of eight to forty advisors with a leader and at least two managers sits inside that range, even though most advisors aren't employees. A leader without managers yet has no leadership team to run it with. The weekly meeting and the scorecard still help on their own, and the rest can wait until there is a team to share it.

Doing it yourself or with an Implementer

EOS Worldwide describes two routes. A self-implementing team uses the books and free tools from its website. Other teams work with a Professional EOS Implementer, a certified coach trained by EOS Worldwide who teaches and facilitates the sessions. EOS Worldwide also offers a free Organizational Checkup of 20 questions that scores a business on the six components.

With an Implementer, EOS Worldwide sets the process out as a sequence: a 90-minute introductory meeting, a Focus Day, two Vision Building days, then quarterly sessions and an annual session. A self-implementing agency can follow the same order from the books, with the leader and every manager who runs a unit in the room each time.

Whichever route you take, the first test is the weekly meeting. If the leadership team can't hold a 90-minute meeting at the same time every week for a quarter, the rest of the tools won't stick.

Where agencies get stuck with EOS

The same few problems come up when an agency starts:

• The scorecard fills up with production and commission numbers. They're easy to collect and they all arrive after the month is over, so the meeting can only look back.
• Every manager brings their own Rocks and the company ends up with 15. EOS caps Rocks at seven, and with more than that, few get finished by the end of the quarter.
• The Level 10 Meeting drifts into a round of unit updates, and IDS gets the last ten minutes instead of sixty.
• The same issue comes back every week because the discussion never ends in a to-do with one name on it.

Each of these has the same fix, which is to run the tools the way they're written for one full quarter before changing anything.

Where EOS stops for a sales agency

EOS runs the leadership team. It tells you to watch a handful of numbers and solve issues at the root. It doesn't tell you how to follow up a lead that went quiet, why one advisor's appointments don't happen, or how to coach the step where each advisor is stuck.

That's the gap we see in agencies running EOS. The scorecard shows the agency total for appointments held, and it turns red. The issue goes on the list. Then the leadership team discusses it with no data below the total: which advisors, at which step, since when. The fix needs each advisor's own ratios, from contacts to appointments to cases, and a follow-up routine that doesn't depend on memory.

EOS and sales coaching work at different levels, so they sit together well. EOS sets the priorities and the meeting. Coaching on each advisor's numbers fixes the step the scorecard flagged.