EOS isn’t a panacea, and your engineers know it

A management framework only helps when it produces better decisions and results without creating more meetings, jargon, and dependence.

There’s a lot to like about the “Entrepreneurial Operating System,” better known as EOS. It gives companies a framework for setting goals, defining responsibilities, measuring performance, and holding people accountable. Those are all good things. Most businesses could use more of them.

But somewhere between reading Traction and hiring an “Implementer,” some companies seem to forget that the purpose of management is to run a better business, not to become really good at running management meetings. I’ve seen enough management fads come and go to be suspicious of any system that claims to have the answer. EOS isn’t a bad idea. It’s just not a panacea, and the enthusiasm surrounding it sometimes gets ahead of the results.

Here are some of the problems with EOS:

1. When the meetings become the business. Let’s start with the meetings. EOS calls for a weekly 90-minute Level 10 Meeting, along with quarterly and annual planning sessions. That’s before departmental meetings, project meetings, and client meetings enter the picture.
   Do the math. A leadership team of eight people spending 90 minutes together every week burns 624 (expensive) person-hours a year on that one meeting alone. That’s a serious investment of time, and it’s fine if the meetings produce better decisions and results. It isn’t fine if everyone spends Monday morning discussing why last week’s “Rocks” aren’t finished because everyone was in meetings.
   There’s a certain irony in taking people away from the work to discuss how they’re going to get more work done. At some point, somebody needs to get out of the conference room and actually run the business.
2. Engineers don’t always speak EOS. The terminology can be another problem, especially in engineering, architecture, manufacturing, and other technical businesses. These are fields full of people who value logic, evidence, and solving real problems. They aren’t necessarily impressed by a new vocabulary that turns familiar management ideas into branded concepts.
   A goal becomes a Rock. A meeting gets a numerical rating. A person responsible for integrating the business becomes an “Integrator.” Somewhere, a perfectly sensible technical person is wondering why everybody can’t just agree on the priorities, assign responsibility, and get on with it.
   Sure, terminology can help create a common language. But it can also make a system feel like a club with its own secret handshake. If you have to learn a whole new vocabulary before you can explain what you’re trying to accomplish, you may have made a simple thing unnecessarily complicated. Skeptical employees can conclude that management has bought into the latest fad rather than thought through what the business actually needs. Once that happens, getting their genuine commitment becomes a lot harder.
3. The Implementer business. Then there’s the cost. Professional EOS Implementers can charge several thousand dollars for a day’s work. Published guidance from EOS Worldwide puts typical starting session fees at $3,000 to $5,000 (I’ve heard as much as $6,000 a day!), with clients commonly completing about 10 sessions over two years. That’s $30,000 to $50,000 in session fees before travel and other expenses. 
   That’s real money for a small business. There’s nothing wrong with paying a good consultant; I’ve done plenty of consulting myself. But the consultant should help the business become more capable, not make it dependent on an outside facilitator to keep its management habits alive. If the leadership team can’t run its own meetings, set priorities, and resolve problems without paying somebody to keep the system going, what exactly has it learned?
4. What happens when the CEO gives up? Here’s a question I’d love to see answered with reliable data: How many companies abandon EOS after adopting it, and how many keep using it but quietly drop the parts they don’t like? I couldn’t find a credible, independent study establishing an overall abandonment rate. The number of companies that have tried EOS doesn’t tell us how many are still using it effectively five years later. That seems like a pretty important number for a system that’s supposed to transform a business.
   Picture a CEO announcing that the company is going to implement EOS. Everyone attends training, develops Rocks, fills out scorecards, and learns the new language. Eighteen months later, the meetings are running long, the scorecards aren’t changing decisions, and the same problems keep coming back. Eventually, the CEO decides the company has other things to do. The meetings get shorter, the quarterly sessions disappear, and the vocabulary slowly returns to normal English.
   The danger is that employees who’ve watched management make a big production out of adopting EOS may conclude that the next management initiative deserves about as much respect as the last one. That’s a credibility problem, and it can cost more than the original consulting bill.
5. Use the good parts and get back to work. None of this means companies shouldn’t set priorities, measure results, clarify responsibilities, or deal with problems directly. Those are basic management practices, and EOS deserves credit for packaging them into a system that some businesses find useful.
   But there’s a difference between having a management system and becoming a slave to one. Entrepreneurial firm owners and managers need room to experiment, change direction, respond to customers, and make decisions without wondering whether everything fits neatly into a framework.

A company doesn’t become entrepreneurial by adopting something called the Entrepreneurial Operating System. It becomes entrepreneurial by thinking clearly, acting decisively, treating people like adults, and getting results. And sometimes the best thing a leadership team can do for its business is cancel a meeting and go out and sell something.

Mark Zweig is consultant at SNZweig. Contact him at mzweig@snzweig.com.