The reader's edition
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business: the summary
Gino Wickman is an entrepreneur who, after running his family's business, spent years working with the leadership teams of small and mid-sized companies and built a system he calls the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS. Traction argues that growing businesses usually stall not for lack of ideas, but because the leaders do not share one vision, nobody clearly owns each function, and problems get talked about instead of solved. The book splits a business into six components: Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process and Traction. It gives one simple tool for each, including the two-page Vision/Traction Organizer, the Accountability Chart, the weekly Scorecard, the IDS issue-solving track, quarterly Rocks and a weekly meeting called the Level 10. It reads as a practical manual for a leadership team, with checklists, worksheets and examples from companies the author has worked with, and ends with a step-by-step order for putting the system in place. Read a chapter at a time, with a printable action book at the end.
- Gino Wickman
- 2007
- 4 chapters
- 6 min read
- 9 takeaways
This is HourLife's reading of Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, in our own words. It is not a substitute for the book.
Chapter 01
Before you start
The book in a minute
Tap a paragraph to highlight it. Turn pages with the arrows, the arrow keys, or a swipe.
Gino Wickman is an entrepreneur who, after running his family's business, spent years working with the leadership teams of small and mid-sized companies and built a system he calls the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS. Traction argues that growing businesses usually stall not for lack of ideas, but because the leaders do not share one vision, nobody clearly owns each function, and problems get talked about instead of solved. The book splits a business into six components: Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process and Traction. It gives one simple tool for each, including the two-page Vision/Traction Organizer, the Accountability Chart, the weekly Scorecard, the IDS issue-solving track, quarterly Rocks and a weekly meeting called the Level 10. It reads as a practical manual for a leadership team, with checklists, worksheets and examples from companies the author has worked with, and ends with a step-by-step order for putting the system in place.
Below are the 9 ideas HourLife readers vote up most, each in our words with a note on what it asks of you, and then the steps that put them to work.
Chapter 02
What readers keep
The takeaways
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1
HourLife takeaway
Every business already runs on an operating system. The only question is whether anyone chose it.
Wickman's point is that most companies run on a mix of habits, the founder's memory and whoever shouts loudest. EOS replaces that with a small set of tools and a fixed rhythm of meetings. It works on six components at once: Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process and Traction.
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2
HourLife takeaway
A vision only works when everyone in the company can see the same picture.
The Vision/Traction Organizer fits the whole plan on two pages. It answers eight questions, from core values and core focus to a 10-year target, a 3-year picture, a 1-year plan and this quarter's Rocks. The leadership team writes it together, then shares it with everyone, so people can tell what the company is doing and why.
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3
HourLife takeaway
Draw the structure first. Put names in the seats second.
The Accountability Chart is not a family tree of job titles. It lists the functions the business needs over the next stretch, each with a handful of roles and exactly one person accountable. The book also separates a visionary seat, full of ideas, from an integrator seat that runs the day-to-day and holds the team together.
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4
HourLife takeaway
The right people share your values. The right seat fits what they get, want and can do.
The People Analyzer rates each person against the company's core values, then checks the seat with three questions: do they Get it, Want it, and have the Capacity to do it? A person can be right for the company and still sit in the wrong seat. The fix for each problem is different.
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5
HourLife takeaway
Run the business on a handful of numbers you look at every single week.
The Scorecard is 5 to 15 weekly numbers, each with an owner and a goal. Looked at in a row over a quarter, they show a problem weeks before it reaches the profit and loss statement. Wickman pushes this down the company too: everyone should have at least one number they own.
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6
HourLife takeaway
Most teams discuss the same problem many times and solve it never.
IDS stands for Identify, Discuss, Solve. You dig until you find the real issue, which is often a layer or two below the symptom. You discuss it once, with everyone saying their piece, and you finish with a decision and a to-do that someone owns. You work the most important issues first, not the easiest.
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7
HourLife takeaway
Ninety days is long enough to finish something real and short enough to stay focused on it.
Rocks are the three to seven most important things for the next quarter, each with one owner. At the end of the quarter a Rock is done or not done, nothing in between. Fewer is better: when everything is a priority, nothing moves.
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8
HourLife takeaway
Same day, same time, same agenda. The routine is what makes the plan happen.
The Level 10 Meeting is the leadership team's weekly 90 minutes. A few minutes each go to good news, the Scorecard, Rock status, headlines and last week's to-dos, and most of the time goes to solving issues. Everyone rates the meeting from 1 to 10 at the end, which keeps it honest.
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9
HourLife takeaway
Write down the few processes that matter, then make sure everyone actually follows them.
The Process component asks a team to name its handful of core processes, document only the steps that produce most of the results, and make them followed by all. The aim is not a thick manual. It is a business that does the important things the same good way, whoever is doing them.
Chapter 03
Put it to work
Your action book
Do the setup steps once, then keep the habits going. The setup changes your week; the habits keep it changed after the first good one.
The download puts this whole reading and a printable action book in one PDF: the setup checklist, then a page of real calendar days for each habit, starting on the day you choose.
Set up once
Score your business on the six components
Have each leader rate Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process and Traction on their own, then compare. Start with the component where your answers are lowest, or where they disagree most.
Name three to seven core values
List the people you would gladly hire again and write down what they have in common. Cut the list to the few values you would actually hire and fire by.
Draw the Accountability Chart before the names
Sketch the functions your business needs, such as sales and marketing, operations, and finance, with a few key roles under each. Only then write one name per seat, and mark any seat that has two names or none.
Build a first Scorecard
Pick 5 to 15 numbers you could check every week, such as new leads, sales calls or cash in the bank. Give each one an owner and a weekly goal, and start a 13-week grid.
Set this quarter's Rocks
Choose three to seven priorities for the next 90 days. Write each so that at the end of the quarter it is plainly done or not done, and give each one owner.
Keep it up
Hold the same weekly meeting
Same day, same time, same agenda, 90 minutes. Spend most of it solving issues, and end by rating the meeting from 1 to 10.
Solve the top three issues, not the easy ones
Each week, pick the three most important items on your issues list and work them through Identify, Discuss, Solve. Every solution ends as a to-do with one owner, due within a week.
Read the Scorecard out loud
Each week, have every owner say on track or off track for their numbers. Anything off track goes straight onto the issues list instead of being explained away.
Chapter 04
The last word
Before you go
Pick one step from the action book and do it today. An idea from a book starts to count once it changes what one ordinary day looks like.
Agree where you are going, give every job one owner, and check every week that it is moving.
That is the end of our reading. Where to go from here, or go back to the full Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business page.
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