Traction: Get A Grip On Your Business Download Free (EPUB, PDF)
Do you have a grip on your business, or does your business have a grip on you?All entrepreneurs and business leaders face similar frustrations—personnel conflict, profit woes, and inadequate growth. Decisions never seem to get made, or, once made, fail to be properly implemented. But there is a solution. It’s not complicated or theoretical.The Entrepreneurial Operating System® is a practical method for achieving the business success you have always envisioned. More than 2,000 companies have discovered what EOS can do.In Traction, you’ll learn the secrets of strengthening the six key components of your business. You’ll discover simple yet powerful ways to run your company that will give you and your leadership team more focus, more growth, and more enjoyment. Successful companies are applying Traction every day to run profitable, frustration-free businesses—and you can too.For an illustrative, real-world lesson on how to apply Traction to your business, check out its companion book, Get A Grip.
Paperback: 246 pages
Publisher: BenBella Books; Expanded edition (April 3, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1936661837
ISBN-13: 978-1936661831
Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 6 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (290 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #1,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #1 in Books > Business & Money > Processes & Infrastructure > Organizational Learning #2 in Books > Business & Money > Management & Leadership > Production & Operations #20 in Books > Business & Money > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > Entrepreneurship
I read Traction in April 2010 and started applying it to my consulting business. We are an information technology consulting firm, with 10 consultants (including me) working on around 5 projects at any given time. Applying the EOS has brought about a big change in the way I approach my business. Our situation is typical of other consulting firms: 99% of the energy in the firm is spent on serving our clients, so not much attention is paid to "working on the business."Rather than write a review of the book, I think some readers might benefit from seeing the practical application of the EOS model described in the book:I did the Organizational Checkup candidly and scored 53%. Here's the status of the other areas:1. Vision: Complete. Has been reviewed and updated with the input of the team. The V/TO is a very useful tool.2. People: In progress. The Get It / Want It / Capacity assessment has been completed (with the team). The right person/right seat is a challenge because currently one person is occupying most of the seats. The book has given us the framework for right person/right seat and we are determining how to apply it without asking our team to overcommit themselves.3. Data: We've created our initial scorecard, and we jointly reviewed it in May and June. The next monthly review is in mid-July, and we will be adding more metrics. More info here on my blog post: [...]4. Issues: We had an external consultant spend time with us in June to observe our operations and provide us a candid assessment. As a result, we've got a list of issues and recommendations. The implementation of the major items is not yet certain. We have to face the choice between focusing on client work versus working on the business.
This is essentially a self-help book for business executives. While there are many useful items in here it is ultimately steered towards generating more consulting business for the author and his fellow consultants. Much of the the useful advice listed in here is already understood by most employees at the most basic of companies under different names. Having worked at companies that implemented the processes discussed in this book and the former front runner From Good to Great I have some advice for business executives to ensure success in getting traction:1. Read the entire book and comprehend.2. If you use the quote "getting the right people into the right seats on the bus" in meetings with specific people in mind it is you that are in the wrong seat, the bus has no driver, and the wheels rotted away long ago. It may also be a shorter bus than you want.3. Do not pick and choose sections to implement that fit your agenda.4. Your "rocks" should not consist of delegating ill-conceived rocks to lower level employees.5. If there is systemic failures within your company that have gone addressed for any significant duration, they will likely remain in place after implementing the processes in this book. This book exists simply to help you feel better that you "did something", much like any self help book.This book is very similar to From Good to Great and is in fact referenced in this book. From Good to Great was, in its time was lauded as the self-help book for business leaders. From Good to Great recommended 11 companies business models as the absolute pinnacle of success for everyone to hold in high esteem. These were to be the companies that shifted from being just good enough (level 4) to great (level 5).
I liked it. The book is well organized and does a nice job of expounding on its points. As I read it another book from 2007 came to mind: No Man's Land: What to Do When Your Company Is Too Big to Be Small but Too Small to Be Big. Both books are written for the small business owner who has gotten his company to a certain level, but things are not growing or moving forward. The book has an Intro and nine chapters as follows:0. Introduction1. The "Entrepreneurial Operating System"2. Letting go of the vine3. The vision component4. The people component5. The data component6. The issues component7. The process component8. The traction component9. Pulling it all togetherThe book basically is a discussion of a diagram the author calls the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) which consists of six components discussed in chapters three through eight. As I say above, I found the organization of the book to be good. However, I did not find the organization of the EOS to be particularly sound. Not too long ago I read and reviewed Be Bodacious: Put Life in Your Leadership which I thought would have been better written if it had promoted the following leadership system: (1) Dream, (2) Strategize, (3) Take Action, & (4) Persist. The vision component in EOS is comparable to the dream component, and the traction component in EOS is comparable to the take action component.
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