A formula for business success?
Technology is a massive enabler of success for small and medium sized businesses (10 - 150 staff), it's not just for big businesses. However technology can just be a cost, and get in the way of efficiency and success, if not used right.
We believe there is a formula for using technology to help turn an SME business into a smooth running, powerful and efficient engine of success:
(BOS + 3HEM + VI) x (Coach + Train) x (BSA + MLA)
x Technology
. The formula is simple - as with anything in business, the vision is easy, making it happen is where it takes effort and skill.
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Technology is an enabler, a multiplier. But on its own, if not aligned to the business, it is just a cost. Technology is integral to modern information management and communication, bot of which are integral to modern business. Therefore although ICT used to sound like a dumbed down version of IT for GCSEs, we feel that ICT is the right term - Information and Communication Technology. To ensure that the cost of ICT is not wasted, it's important to align the team, the systems, and the business. It's all about your team. We help you and your people follow the formula. To give you the best chance to achieve your goals and success. Through this formula, you and we will be clear where you are now, where you want to go, and have the ICT team and systems to support you successfully getting there.
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BOS - Ideally your business will already be using, or in the process of implementing an established strategic operating system for how you come up with strategy, and translate the vision and strategy into tactics and delivery. It doesn't matter which BOS you use EOS (EOS Worldwide/Traction/Gino Wickman), Scaling Up (Rockerfeller Habits, Scaling Up, Verne Hamish), Pinnacle, Ninety, or another clear operating model - but to truly power success we believe you should have one model used throughout your business. The BOS we come across most commonly is the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). If you do not established a operating model, we will assess your current organisational maturity and make recommendations to ensure you have the business foundations for success.
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HEM - We then align ICT management process, including 2 daily short Highly Effective Meeting structures within the overall business team to ensure that ICT is aligned to the business goals, and is aligned daily. This is important whether everyone is in an office, or working remotely. We help your team use Technology to multiply the impact of your team on customers and your business. At the business level, we recommend having a monthly management meeting, where finances and a deeper dive to progress quarterly goals is held. EOS does not mandate daily meetings, or monthly management meetings - they are not necessary to "run on EOS", but many companies that run on EOS do find that they are highly valuable. Given that we tend to recommend EOS, if a BOS isn't in place, we therefore recommend 3 additional Highly Effective Meetings in addition to EOS - daily management headlines meeting, daily ICT huddle (which is common in Scrum and agile software development anyway), plus a monthly management meeting.
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VI - Ideally a business has a Great Visionary/Integrator relationship as described in the EOS book "Rocket Fuel". The Visionary is often a founder with a natural vision and ability to inspire people within the business and outside it. The Integrator is usually the person that helps prioritise activities within the business, whether they're called the MD, CEO, COO, CFO, or some other title. We help ensure the ICT team and systems have to enable the communication needs, information and data requirements, that enable the Visionary to excel at their role, and that align to the priorities that the Integrator requires to facilitate the business goals - this week, this quarter, this year, and through to the long term vision.
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Coach + Train - no, not ways of getting around! A clear business operating model such as EOS or Scaling Up, plus Technology, and 2 highly effective meetings to coordinate it is necessary, but not sufficient, to enable success. The world does not stand still, so you need to add an appropriate balance of training, coaching, and mentoring, at all levels from front line staff to senior executives and CEOs, to develop the people. Increasingly the AI models being adopted to supplement the people also need coaching and training to enable them to deliver value appropriately aligned to the business and people.
A bit more about the BOS, coaching and training. We most commonly come across EOS as a business model, and Vistage as an executive coaching and training programme. EOS can either be "self implemented", or businesses can use "Implementers" to teach businesses how to run the EOS model. EOS Worldwide provides an exceptional level of training to their Implementers, and in their trained role as EOS Implementers, they are guided to be focused on teaching the leadership team in the purity of EOS - they are explicitly not personal coaches to individual business leaders. Scaling Up, Pinnacle and Ninety, each have coaches in their delivery structures. EOS, is a great structure that clearly and simplify defines the core of pretty much any successful business. However, to some people EOS can seem a bit dry or clinical.
We view EOS as being like a black and white photo. It's a brilliant way of distilling the core elements needed for business success, whatever success means to you - big or small - vision, people, data, process, issues, and traction. In the same way that a black and white photo has the core elements of subject, composition, lighting, and exposure settings. But it doesn't have everything you need to make a successful business. Some people love the clarity of a black and white photo, whilst others find it boring.
For example, EOS doesn't tell you how to do sales and marketing , or how to set up pay and remuneration scheme, nor how to actually do your core business offering. Those, and many other things, are for you to decide. For example - we say "EOS doesn't tell you how to do sales and marketing". What EOS does is guide that you must be clear in your vision on who your target market is, and your value to your ideal customers, but it leaves it to you to learn how to, or find specialists to, to turn that sales and marketing vision into action).
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Coaching and training help you add that depth - they are like adding colour, movement, and sound to a photo. They bring it to life. They help you and your team really deliver and build on the clarity that EOS brings. We've seen success from many forms of training - the best that we've experienced for many business leaders and leadership teams is Vistage, with their great roster of speakers, coaches/chairs and peer group. However, we have also experienced and seen great success from Cranfield Business Growth Programme (BGP), a wide range of books, training courses, and of course online content, and of course EOS implementers. Coaching and training can be expensive, but any of them can truly multiply the value of EOS. Which is then multiplied further by appropriate use of technology, aligned to the business, coaching and training.
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BSA + MLA - Branding & Sales Activation + Market Leadership Alignment.
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Branding & Sales Activation: Running on EOS ensures that a business defines clearly the basics of its marketing strategy - including the target market, what summarises why the business is unique in its market, and a proven process for delivering value to customers. However to truly achieve it's full potential, a business needs to communicate that to the market and to customers. EOS doesn't try to define how to do that, it leaves that to each individual business and industry. EOS also says that you should have someone accountable for the marketing & sales perspective of the business. I have found that, amongst others, the principles from Grant Leboff (Sticky Marketing and the difference between brand building and sales activation) and Bruce McKinnon (The Brand Arrow), along with Haydn Rowe and the Results Corporation give great principles.
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Market Leadership Alignment: From the Visionary/Integrator, and throughout the Marketing, Sales, Operations, and Finance leadership team, everyone should be aligned on whether the business’s top ONE priority for market dominance in the chosen niche is by leading on Product Leadership, Operational Excellence, or Customer Intimacy, and ensure that everyone in the business is aligned to that ONE top priority, with enough capacity to be fast follower on the other two.
You can read more about these from: Roger Harrop – Staying in the Helicopter, HBR - https://hbr.org/1993/01/customer-intimacy-and-other-value-disciplines, https://getlucidity.com/strategy-resources/guide-to-the-value-disciplines-model/, and from understanding some of the principles of the Blue Ocean Strategy without having to adopt it.
There are many other experts in marketing alignment - we just mention some of the training out there that have shaped us. We don't get involved in helping in this area, we just guide that you should have someone applying Branding and sales activation, and to have decided and be clear on whether your area of market leadership is customer intimacy, product leadership, or operational excellence, to guide both your marketing, and your operational delivery. By being aligned on these, they also act as a multiplier to the core EOS + 3HEM + VI. It very much helps a technology strategy know whether, if there is limited capacity or budget (there always is!) how to prioritise between enabling customer intimacy, innovating new products, or making existing processes more operationally excellent and efficient, and "followed by all".
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If you don't have an existing Business Operating System in use, we therefore recommend the formula is:
(EOS + 3HEM + VI) x (Coach + Train) x (BSA + MLA)
x Technology
