December 7, 2022
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Beth Berman : What must we get done this year, In order to build towards the three-year picture? Maybe this year we need to move an office. Maybe this year there’s new technology we need to implement. Maybe we need a new payroll system or accounts payable or maybe we’re outsourcing that stuff. What are some of these things that absolutely have to happen to position us for growth?
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Hey, this is Bethany Fishbein. I am the CEO of the Power Practice and host of the Power Hour optometry podcast, recently named the number one Optometry Podcast on the planet, the whole earth. That’s exciting. And as we head into December, our minds shift to closing out 2022 planning ahead for 2023. So my guest today is Beth Berman. Beth is an Executive Coach and an Implementer of EOS which is Entrepreneurial Operating System. For those in the know Beth is not just an EOS implementer she is our EOS implementer she worked with leadership team in my practice, and really helps get teams focused in the same direction. So Beth, thank you. I’m so glad you’re here under rather bizarre circumstances but here you are. Thank you for being here.
Beth Berman: My pleasure. And congratulations on the podcast.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, the whole planet Beth, the whole planet. Yeah, so really, we’re here today to talk about one of, I think the most powerful tools given in EOS. And if you’ve read the book “Traction” if you’ve worked with an implementer if you’ve read “Get a Grip” or any of the other EOS materials, you’ve probably heard of it but this tool is called the V TO, which is for Vision Traction Organiser. So Beth talk about the VTO for a second, kind of what is it and when do you introduce it with teams and when do they use it?
Beth Berman: Okay, so the VTO is basically a simplification of all the great thinking in strategy and planning. So strategic view and how do you plan and execute to make it happen. So the founder of EOS worldwide, Gino Wickman, who’s the author of the book “Traction” and a whole library of books. And the beginning of what I would call a movement to help business leaders get what they want from their business with the EOS system. The VTO basically takes all of strategy and plan and boils it down to eight simple questions. So the eight questions are: What are your core values? What’s your core focus? What’s your 10-year target? What’s your marketing strategy? What’s your three-year picture? Your one-year plan? Your quarterly rocks? and your issues list? And it’s in defining your answers to these questions as a leadership team and then ultimately getting everybody in the organisation aligned around those questions that helps an organization plan where they want to go and how they plan to get there. As far as where it’s introduced in the EOS engagement with a client. There are three foundational days and it’s on the second of the three foundational days we begin to work on these eight questions. We put the traction piece or the execution piece first to get some practices in place. And then in our second day together, we have the first step two days of vision building and it’s super powerful. I absolutely love facilitating it because the impact of it is extraordinarily clarifying and unifying. When people can get aligned around it,
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: For sure. We talk about that with teams and clients when people don’t know where you’re headed. Everybody’s working their hardest and you’re not always getting somewhere because it feels like people are rowing in opposite directions and the boat staying still. So having this really kind of pushes the conversation of who are we and what is it that we really want and where are we headed? So let’s break down those eight steps a little bit. So the first one is defining core values. Talk a little bit about what core values are and how you figure them out.
Beth Berman: Well, I’m going to start by saying what they’re not. So they’re not just a bunch of words to throw on your website, so that you can show you’re a good company. What they really are is a set of agreed-upon values or principles around what you as a leadership team value, the behaviors you want to see in the organization. But they need to be authentic, not aspirational, but actually what is your leadership team’s DNA? What’s the company code so that someone who fits in the company would be someone who matches those core values and people who are in the company who actually fit them or people that we would prize and want to keep and so on and so forth. Assuming they can do the jobs as well. They’re going to help us build a great culture, but it’s also about those people who might not be a fit people who really are never going to be that way. So each company has their own personality, their own company code. One company may be all about winning and crushing others and others. Others may be more about being the best ever or making the greatest impact or something like that. Those kinds of things that those kinds of people are programmed into. Are we a group of chargers winners? Is it a sales-oriented team? Is that who we are, you know, are we an aggressive company? Are we disrupting the world? What kinds of people do we want in that organization versus what kind of people do we want in some other kind of an organization? So it really is a definer of what we want to see in behaviors, and we use core values to hire, to fire, to review, to recognise people who are exhibiting these core values because we prize them for demonstrating these and sometimes coach people up around them or coach them out if they’re really not a fit because people who are not a fit or ways into the organisation ultimately it’s hard to make those decisions, but if they’re not a fit, we really want to allow them as one of my clients says reintroduce them to industry so they can find their fit.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: They’re definitely not just words on a page. I mean, in the initial work to write them down, it feels like you know, okay, we got to write something and but as you live with them and work with them, I don’t know if you remember when our team did this. Like a year later, we were still debating one of our core values, like we had picked fun and positive then we decided we weren’t fun. We are fun. And then we weren’t always positive because part of how we got where we are is constantly looking at what’s not working and working to fix it. So we kept playing with it. It just didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel right until we settled on the ones that did so. It’s an exercise. Do you have tips for how a team can get there?
Beth Berman: Yeah, So a couple points with what you just discussed. One of the things about core values is we’re not looking for those core values to be absolutes, like every minute of every day that we’re behaving according to these prescriptions. It’s that most of the time we’re going to demonstrate these core values as far as getting there. The first step when I work with a team is to leave a discussion around people we admire and what do we admire about them and then kind of decipher out of that, what are the things that are really there that are most important to you that are like you and as I said, Not aspirational. For some teams, they resonate, they nail it right away. For some teams, they may believe that early on that they are a certain way. I think you guys are a lot of fun, but fun is not what drives your culture. There are other things that are strong or for you and it took time to discover that. So sometimes it’s an iterative process. Sometimes it’s right out of the box and this is who we are. Often what I find though, is that what companies have on the wall and the website is often not even close to where they are, you know, it’s refreshing when they are aligned. But it’s really a deliberate process to get to your authentic set of values and behaviors.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, that’s absolutely for sure. So once you have those, step two is Core Focus. What is that?
Beth Berman: If you think of core values as who you are, Core Focus is what you love to do and you’re best at and it’s not a marketing tool at all. It’s basically a screening tool for what you’ll say yes to and what you’ll say no, too well, let me actually back up before the for instance. So, Core Focus is comprised of two parts, one, your purpose cause or passion or why you do what you do. So beyond the profit incentive, why is it that you continue to face the challenges of running an optometry practice and coming to work every day? All of that? And next, what do you do best? And the idea between the why and the what is we want to say yes to those things where we are, have the passion around them, we are driven by them, but also where we have the highest capability where it is natural for our people to deliver on it, our processes to deliver on it so that when we’re examining opportunities, we know what we should take in because it’s a fit, we can rock it, or something that’s just going to be disruptive and really not help us grow in our core capabilities. If you think about the term core focus, it’s like you have a tennis racket and you’re hitting that ball. There’s a sweet spot and your core focus is your sweet spot in any opportunity outside of that is really something we want to say no to because it’s going to take too much effort or disrupt too much. Or maybe we won’t have the opportunity of winning because there’s no sustained passion and capability around it.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: It’s interesting to think about where this comes up in conversation. One of my soap boxes is that there’s so much free advice out there. And so we see where somebody asks a question and then they get 32 answers and they can be really different and none of them is really necessarily wrong. But they might not be right for that practice. And they could be totally right for another one. So we were in a conversation on our client email this morning about grading patients, which we’re talking about offices that have long wait for appointments. And there’s a point where it’s too long and people stop making appointments. And so how do you resolve this and we started talking about prioritizing some patients over others and blah, blah, blah. And somebody wrote in and said, We’ve never really done that. And in her office, they’ve always been focused on being accessible for everyone in the community to come into. So when they have more patients to their schedule can handle they expand. Were another practice that’s focused on delivering a specific type of care. And that’s their goals and their passion. There are lots of people who don’t fit into that type of care and acknowledging that some do and some don’t. is absolutely right for her. Were for the other one. It doesn’t make sense. So these things are practical. They’re not like just do this for the sake of the exercise. This is how you know what decisions are right in the practice. It all makes sense.
Beth Berman: If people ever, you know, experience going outside of their core capabilities and where they have their drive and their passion. They often have stories about Yeah, well we tried this. It just didn’t work in our people couldn’t sustain it, or it just wasn’t working. It didn’t feel right.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, the exact same thing could be successful two miles down the road, because it fits their focus. And it doesn’t mean if it’s yours. Alright, so you got your core values you got your core focus. 10 years target feels, that feels like super beyond aspirational. Like how do you know if you’re going to want 10 years? Is that a real thing?
Beth Berman: So first of all, the 10-year target is a trademarked term. It doesn’t have to be 10 years out, it could be five, seven, whatever’s reasonable. But what the 10-year target is, it’s kind of like a Northstar as to where you want to take the company within a given timeframe. Or take the practice within a given timeframe. And here’s the big misconception. People think that a tenure target or a be hag awful term but a big hairy audacious goal. They think it shouldn’t be about Yeah, we want to get to X number of dollars and this and that. But it typically isn’t it’s a rallying cry for the organization. It’s something that your people can get behind. So as an example, when Gino Whitman the founder of EOS had about double-digit number of clients years ago said by 2020 I’m gonna have 10,000 companies running on EOS. And in the beginning, people thought he was crazy because it was like pie in the sky number. And then they helped him build it. And they began to see once you push the flywheel and keep it going, that it was happening, it was happening and we did exceed 10,000 companies running purely on with an implementer on EOS. Well, now that we’re on a path to 100,000 companies, so what do you see? Because what you put out there is what you will create? Well, first of all, I as an EOS implementer when I think of 100,000 companies having what I call the medicine that is EOS to help companies get what they want. That’s so powerful. I see how the movie plays out with my clients over and over and over again. And to think of 100,000 companies having those extraordinary impacts, you know, having better lives, more profit, more success, better people, whatever it is they want maybe elevating out of the business as a certain head of optometry did and actually running another practice, a consulting practice as in the case of Bethany Fishbein, so it’s something that’s whatever you want from your business, you set this target and it goes to almost like the Woo-woo Power of Visioning. Because whatever it is you put out there that big number or that big achievement maybe your practices in X number of states or a practice is serving a certain type of client or whatever it is. You want it to be a rallying cry for your organization and it’s kind of like the Field of Dreams. You know, once you build it, they will come. It’s the same kind of thing, what you name it, you’re going to build to get there because that’s the goal. That’s the driving force. That’s the Northstar you’re leaning toward super powerful.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: You’re putting out all this positive energy and I don’t want to I don’t want to be the counter to it. But I have questions here.
Beth Berman: Dead good. I can outfit you know that.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Well, that’s the yin and yang here. So when you put that though, I mean the first thing that people think about is money grows multiple offices, big things. I understand the feel that you have as an implementer feeling like being part of something bigger, but I feel like in an office with staff, if you say we want to have a three location $10 million practice,
Beth Berman: Are they gonna get behind that?
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So like, how do you turn maybe a monetary goal or something that’s like a goal for you into something that your team really will feel as a rallying cry because they’re not into growth for money?
Beth Berman: Yeah, so it really depends on the team as to what kind of people you have goes back to core values and what people are going to get excited about. But it could be that you’re going to be the best and you’ve got a bunch of people who want to be the best that you’re the leader in your tri-state area in X technology, or X type of care. It could be anything. So it’s really about getting to not what the owners are going to benefit from but what is the company going to benefit from? And then as you build towards it in a three-year picture that we’ll talk about, people can get excited about the progress toward it as well.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: One more negative and then I’ll go back right up there with you. But sometimes we’re working with owners who in their 10-year plan, they want to be out.
Beth Berman: Yeah.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Their plan is to sell to somebody else in 10 years. How does that factor in?
Beth Berman: Well, that is their individual goal, but that’s not the company that’s not going to rally the cry for the company. So what is it that the company values that would be the target that’s relevant to them, and in some cases, elevating and selling out? You know, if you’ve involves, as some practice leaders and business owners, when they get to an exit, there’s a reward for their people. It really depends on what the circumstances are and where they’re going. Where is it that people can interpret value from something that is a complimentary to the owner’s goal.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: It gives us an opportunity to I think to think about the legacy that they want to leave so if they are thinking three to five years, they want to sell. We’re asking for a tenure goal. You can still have a tenure goal for the business that this is still going to be the go to spot in the county for high end eyewear in 10 years. We’re going to be serving 10,000 people a year or doing 10,000 eye exams a year. They might not be there to see it. But they’ve got a team on the path that hopefully will be even after the successor takes over.
Beth Berman: Yes, that’s very true. Okay,
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So after the 10-year target, the next step is Marketing Strategy.
Beth Berman: Yes. So with Core Values we have who we, Core Focus what we love to do and we’re best at. 10 Year target or Core Target however far we want to go plan it out is where we want to go. Now, who do we need to attract and what do we need to say to them in order to make that happen? So marketing strategy is about attracting ideal patients. ideal clients could be also applied to ideal people within the company but let’s take the patient and customers segment within Optometry. So what we want to find out first and get clear on is. Bethany, I’m sure you’ve had many patients that just were not ideal and certainly less than ideal. There’s you know, so many bumps along the road with them. They just didn’t get you you didn’t get them. And the idea there is we don’t really want to spend our marketing effort trying to attract those people. So what we want to do is we want to identify and we don’t want to spend our marketing energy and our money and our time. We want to spend it where we’re gonna get the greatest ROI with people who are going to be ideal people to work with to serve. And so we get really clear on four elements basically target market, three uniques proven process, and guarantee so target market is getting clear on who those ideal clients are. So who are they? Where are they demographics, that kind of stuff, but most importantly, what do they care about their psychographics? How do they think what do they value? Someone who wants to come in and out really quickly? Or are they someone who wants to know that they’re gonna get great care spend the time former relationship in an example for one practice versus another one that may be just the volume? Let’s get an Our eyes are one of those kinds of things where they may just want to get people through the door really quickly versus an extended kind of experience where they feel cared for. So there are different ends of the spectrum there. And so we get really clear on who we want to market to. And maybe like if you think about it, so if they’re in a certain geographic area, if they’re in a certain socio-economic strata, where would they play? Maybe they are in country clubs, maybe they are in after-school events, where would we find these people? Those kinds of things might be an extension of that. Then three Uniques, so three uniques are three things that taken together will differentiate you from everybody else out there and from your competition. So for us going back to the ideal client, in EOS our ideal clients are growth-oriented, frustrated leaders who want more, they’re willing to get open and honest. They realize that what got them here isn’t going to get them there and our uniques for that target market, our vision traction healthy, so no other company is offering a simplified system of integrated simple tools to help the team and the company ultimately get aligned around vision have the traction to execute with discipline and accountability. And then also work on Team health to have cohesive open honest fun loving teams who lack in politics and ego and emotion and are just having a great time running the business again. So three things taken together differentiate you.
Proven Process is the third of those four components and that is visual illustration, a one-page visual illustration of the client or customer or patient journey. From the time they’re thinking about working with you till they’re longtime raving fans of yours. So what we do with our clients is determined, Do you want to do this and really explain what this concept is? It can be built out in a big way around just getting a clear simple view of what the client experience is going to look like. Now, as I said, marketing strategy can be used for your patients, your customers, and all of that. But it also could be used for as you’re attracting people. Imagine if you had a proven process and you could show people, the right people. Here’s what your journey looks like. First, you’ll come in and then we have a training you meet the team and we’ll have a training session that will do this that we’re going to train and develop you and it’s going to look like this. They know you’ve got a process for helping them be the best they can be and that’s very enticing. A great sales leader once said, you want to inform people tell them but if you want to persuade people, show them and that’s just what this proven process does.
And then finally The Guarantee and the guarantee is a pledge or a promise that takes away. The last-minute hesitation when buyers or prospective patients are making that decision. There’s one little fear or I’m gonna do it, but maybe I won’t make the appointment. It’s kind of taking that fear away with a guarantee. So Marketing Strategy is really about, who you want to talk to, who you’re gonna go after what you’re going to say what you’re going to show them and how are you going to push them over the edge to make the right decision to work with you.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So now you move into your three-year picture. Talk about three-year.
Beth Berman: The three-year picture is a transition from the vision side of things to the traction side of things. So from the strategy to beginning to plan. So what we do is three years out, for example, 12/31/2025 Revenue Profit Measurable so we have some metrics there. But the most important part of this and those numbers are important. But the real impact of this is this vivid vision that we create. So the vivid vision is what will we look like three years from now. So that instead of going to this thinking, oh let’s just plan for the B hag that whatever it is that big 10-year target is. Let’s get more granular and say, how many offices will we have? Will we be in best places to work? What kinds of training and development opportunities will we have? What kinds of technology will we be using all kinds of things about what you’re going to look like as a company? What are they saying about you in the press, things like that and the idea is you put it out there it’s great crystal clear vision so you can begin to build towards it. You can also recruit into it and retain people around it. Hey, and just three years we’re doing this and then when we get to attraction side, this is how we’re building towards it. Don’t you want to be a part of this journey? Isn’t this exciting? And where are we going to celebrate when we hit those numbers as a company of this great celebration and you know, I always say of course with our EOS implementer because we like to celebrate success. I think celebration is really important. But the key here is now you can go from the three-year picture to the traction side, where we start to really plan and get to execution.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I just learned this because as you know, my husband is EOS Stickler, so he reads and rereads to make sure that we’re following all of the points. So you redo this rear target yearly.
Beth Berman: Yes. Ideally, what you’re going to do is you’re going to push it three years out, so that you’re always chasing the future that’s going to take you to your ultimate target. There are some companies that will kind of keep it because they really want to know when they hit it kind of thing. But I believe the intent is to actually set the target you always are looking three years out then you can keep adjusting it forward. It’s kind of like a school of thought about do you want to achieve it? Or do you want to keep pushing it out so that you’re always that distance away from it.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: It’s kind of neat though, to have the option to make that decision. Like to even just think about, let’s review and make sure that still is the track that we want to be on. We’ve worked with offices that are headed in one direction for a variety of reasons. And then something changes in their family something changes on their team, sometimes something changes within themselves, and their focus shifts. And so it’s neat that you get a chance to redo so it’s better to go solidly in one direction and change directions if you have to than not to go in any direction at all. So I thought it was a cool thing that was new for me.
Beth Berman: It’s a very cool thing. And it’s the idea about really getting intentional about what your future is going to look like so you can plan around it.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So the three year we’ve worked down so you’ve got this 10-year big Woowoo vision. And then three years is like a little closer to reality like this is eight here’s where we’re really planning to be. So the one year I think just make sense. It’s where are we going to be a year from now? What does that look like?
Beth Berman: Yes. So the One Year is now as I said about execution. So what we do is we look at the end of the year-end of whatever your fiscal year is, and we say where do we want to be from a revenue profit measurables? Measurables are just typically activity based numbers. So what are the metrics? But then what we do and this is very hard for my clients in the beginning and they get better and better about it. We decide what are the three to seven most important things we must achieve this year. So not 37 things, not 50 fangs. Because when everything’s important, nothing is important. One of the themes in EOS is less is more and we’re always looking to prioritize the most important thing so as we look then, as we think about the one-year plan we look towards the three-year picture and say in what’s important now in order to build towards the future we want to create in that three-year picture. What are the most important things we must get done in a company that’s running a little bit helter-skelter and maybe you not have their act fully all together, at least part of the first year one of the goals may be to get organized and get themselves in good stead to move forward and grow and build towards that future they created so it’s not always like the entire all the goals are going to be we can just okay, we named them we’re gonna get there sometimes there’s some preliminary work that we need to do to get to where we want to go because what business is as we walk into it is perfect. No first business is ever perfect. But typically there’s a setup stage to that, but what we say most important three to seven things. So what must we get done this year? In order to build towards the three-year picture? Maybe this year we need to move into office maybe this year. There’s new technology we need to implement. Maybe we need a new payroll system or accounts payable or maybe we’re outsourcing that stuff. What are some of these things that absolutely have to happen to position us for growth? Then once you have that we can be really clear about that. And should I move on to rocks?
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, go for it.
Beth Berman: Okay, because it’s kind of a natural flow. there as well. So once we have the one-year plan, we then want to move you into what we call a 90-day world with your quarterly priorities. So same deal we have revenue profit measurables and then what are the three to seven most important things first at the leadership levels, whoever the practice management practice leadership team is, what does the company need to get done? What are the most important things? And then what are our key departments? Or key functions need to get done this year? And now here’s where the goals were just about the priorities for the year now we’re executing on them. So we need to assign accountability. So we say what are the most important things what is done look like? So we say, okay, these are the things that are our priorities. Now, who’s accountable for making sure they get done? The concept of accountability is very central to EOS. We don’t just put goals out there. But who is ensuring that these results happen? So we create smart goals and in this case, just as the SMART goals in the one year plan, so specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely, now we say who’s accountable for them? So what does that mean? It means that someone is not necessarily getting all of those things done, but they’re making sure that those things happen. And that’s how we then move into a 90-day world with 90-Day goals and within EOS. There’s a meeting structure weekly to make sure we’re executing and moving forward. On those goals and so forth.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I’m always super impressed. You’ve heard me say it before, but I’m always impressed with just the elegance and simplicity of this, that it takes something that’s so complicated and turns it into something that makes sense, Right? What’s the big picture for you? Where can you reasonably see yourself getting in a couple of years? What does it look like a year from now? Let’s bring that into what needs to happen in the next 90 days to get this done? Who’s going to make sure that it gets done and then let’s follow up. It makes it feel easy. It’s not always easy to execute because all of the stuff that comes out you day to day, talk for a minute Beth, because I like it and I talk about the example a lot but talk about why it’s called rocks.
Beth Berman: So if you have a glass or a jar, this is from Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People but you think a glass and that represents your capacity, whether the amount of time that you want to devote to the work 50 hours, 80 hours, 40 hours, whatever it is, that amount of time is your limit. That’s the jar that’s holding what’s inside and inside represents your time but then you put into this glass, pebbles and those pebbles are really like your to do list with things that you just do day to day, that kind of stuff. And then also going into that glass there’s sand filling up the space, and then figuring out all the other stuff is water and you find that as the volume level rises within that jar. Human nature is such that we’re going to take that jar and we’re going to try to put our big boulders those rocks or priorities into it, because maybe we’ve procrastinated maybe we’ve said we got this big 90-day rock, this big goal. We don’t have room for it because we’ve spent our time doing all the little stuff. Had we done the rocks maybe that other stuff can be filtered in if you put them in first and focus on your most important things. And then all the other stuff can filter in and often things will come off the list because they’re no longer relevant when you look at getting done the most important things so the rocks are about managing your time, your energy, your priorities, and getting clear on what must happen and being clear. On what done look like because we’re not talking about getting it almost done. We’re talking about what can we predict that we can get done in this time period and actually get it done so that number one we can celebrate success number two, we can accomplish that and harkening back to what you just said also, one of the leadership abilities is simplifying. And EOS itself prides itself on the simplicity of the tools. We put them out there. They’re open source. It’s just not easy to execute on.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah. Executions is the challenging part. So the last piece of this is your issues and talk about issues and the issues list. It’s one of my favorite things about this.
Beth Berman: My favorite thing is issues people will look at you like. So the good news is that an EOS issues are really anything that’s worth the team’s energy to focus on. So an issue can be sure it can be a problem, an obstacle can be a challenge, but it can also be an opportunity and the idea with the issues list. On this tool the VTO or Vision Traction Organizer is that there are things that we may want to do in the business, that new technology I mentioned. Or maybe it’s really important to get that new technology or that new system in the office, but you just don’t have the bandwidth right now. It didn’t make it to the priority list on the rocks. Well, let’s park it on the VTO so it doesn’t distract us from our priorities during the quarter. So the idea on the issues list is at least this issues list to get it out of our head, put it on this list, know that the end of the quarter, we’re going to look at that again and say, Is this something we want to prioritize now? Do we have the bandwidth to do this now? Is it important now? We always want to be chasing not what’s urgent but what’s most important to do. And we don’t want to distract from our rocks with, oh well there’s a new something or other a new shiny object that our visionary decided was be exciting. Let’s look at this now. Well, now we’ve got our priorities, okay. And only if we process that issue and find if it’s an issue that someone brings forward and decides is important enough to talk about your weekly meetings. Only then could we possibly decide that it’s important enough to bring into the quarter and actually, if we’re going to have the capacity to do it, it makes sense to pursue it but typically, we focus on our rocks every so often we have an exception, but not often. We get better and better about planning and understanding that there’s a whole practice around issue solving and issue management. Within EOS. It’s super powerful. But the idea here is we are just humans we’re distractible. We are all these sleepless nights with all these issues in our head. Put them on a list somewhere go back to sleep, focus on what you need the most important things go on vacation move on.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I love it and one of the best parts of this whole thing is that this entire VTO if you’re doing it on like your notebook, writing paper kind of person. This is a two-sided sheet of paper. This is one sheet.
Beth Berman: The tools look a little bit like kindergarten but they are so powerful and it’s across industries across all kinds of clients. I have everything from government contractors in cybersecurity, do optometry companies, to gyms to manufacturers. I mean, it’s amazing. I’m truly amazed by the simplicity and efficacy of this system. It’s just, it’s joyed to do this work.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I love that. And Beth I am amazed by you as always and the clarity that you bring to the EOS tools and the teams that use them. I think this is something that, as you said seems simple but is something that you get better and better at as you use it more and improve, and studying this and learning this for me has been an absolute pleasure. It’s changed my business. It’s infiltrated. That’s a negative word, but it’s made its way into the work we do a Power Practice internally and with our clients and just keeps getting better. So thank you so much for sharing it if somebody wants more best, where do they find you
Beth Berman: So they can find me on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/growthdc/, My email is beth.berman@EOSworldwide.com. and I’m happy to help!
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Thank you and for anyone listening. If you’re interested in learning more about Power Practice you can find us online at www.powerpractice.com Looking forward to giving more end-of-year information soon. thank you so much.
Read the Transcription
Beth Berman : What must we get done this year, In order to build towards the three-year picture? Maybe this year we need to move an office. Maybe this year there’s new technology we need to implement. Maybe we need a new payroll system or accounts payable or maybe we’re outsourcing that stuff. What are some of these things that absolutely have to happen to position us for growth?
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Hey, this is Bethany Fishbein. I am the CEO of the Power Practice and host of the Power Hour optometry podcast, recently named the number one Optometry Podcast on the planet, the whole earth. That’s exciting. And as we head into December, our minds shift to closing out 2022 planning ahead for 2023. So my guest today is Beth Berman. Beth is an Executive Coach and an Implementer of EOS which is Entrepreneurial Operating System. For those in the know Beth is not just an EOS implementer she is our EOS implementer she worked with leadership team in my practice, and really helps get teams focused in the same direction. So Beth, thank you. I’m so glad you’re here under rather bizarre circumstances but here you are. Thank you for being here.
Beth Berman: My pleasure. And congratulations on the podcast.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, the whole planet Beth, the whole planet. Yeah, so really, we’re here today to talk about one of, I think the most powerful tools given in EOS. And if you’ve read the book “Traction” if you’ve worked with an implementer if you’ve read “Get a Grip” or any of the other EOS materials, you’ve probably heard of it but this tool is called the V TO, which is for Vision Traction Organiser. So Beth talk about the VTO for a second, kind of what is it and when do you introduce it with teams and when do they use it?
Beth Berman: Okay, so the VTO is basically a simplification of all the great thinking in strategy and planning. So strategic view and how do you plan and execute to make it happen. So the founder of EOS worldwide, Gino Wickman, who’s the author of the book “Traction” and a whole library of books. And the beginning of what I would call a movement to help business leaders get what they want from their business with the EOS system. The VTO basically takes all of strategy and plan and boils it down to eight simple questions. So the eight questions are: What are your core values? What’s your core focus? What’s your 10-year target? What’s your marketing strategy? What’s your three-year picture? Your one-year plan? Your quarterly rocks? and your issues list? And it’s in defining your answers to these questions as a leadership team and then ultimately getting everybody in the organisation aligned around those questions that helps an organization plan where they want to go and how they plan to get there. As far as where it’s introduced in the EOS engagement with a client. There are three foundational days and it’s on the second of the three foundational days we begin to work on these eight questions. We put the traction piece or the execution piece first to get some practices in place. And then in our second day together, we have the first step two days of vision building and it’s super powerful. I absolutely love facilitating it because the impact of it is extraordinarily clarifying and unifying. When people can get aligned around it,
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: For sure. We talk about that with teams and clients when people don’t know where you’re headed. Everybody’s working their hardest and you’re not always getting somewhere because it feels like people are rowing in opposite directions and the boat staying still. So having this really kind of pushes the conversation of who are we and what is it that we really want and where are we headed? So let’s break down those eight steps a little bit. So the first one is defining core values. Talk a little bit about what core values are and how you figure them out.
Beth Berman: Well, I’m going to start by saying what they’re not. So they’re not just a bunch of words to throw on your website, so that you can show you’re a good company. What they really are is a set of agreed-upon values or principles around what you as a leadership team value, the behaviors you want to see in the organization. But they need to be authentic, not aspirational, but actually what is your leadership team’s DNA? What’s the company code so that someone who fits in the company would be someone who matches those core values and people who are in the company who actually fit them or people that we would prize and want to keep and so on and so forth. Assuming they can do the jobs as well. They’re going to help us build a great culture, but it’s also about those people who might not be a fit people who really are never going to be that way. So each company has their own personality, their own company code. One company may be all about winning and crushing others and others. Others may be more about being the best ever or making the greatest impact or something like that. Those kinds of things that those kinds of people are programmed into. Are we a group of chargers winners? Is it a sales-oriented team? Is that who we are, you know, are we an aggressive company? Are we disrupting the world? What kinds of people do we want in that organization versus what kind of people do we want in some other kind of an organization? So it really is a definer of what we want to see in behaviors, and we use core values to hire, to fire, to review, to recognise people who are exhibiting these core values because we prize them for demonstrating these and sometimes coach people up around them or coach them out if they’re really not a fit because people who are not a fit or ways into the organisation ultimately it’s hard to make those decisions, but if they’re not a fit, we really want to allow them as one of my clients says reintroduce them to industry so they can find their fit.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: They’re definitely not just words on a page. I mean, in the initial work to write them down, it feels like you know, okay, we got to write something and but as you live with them and work with them, I don’t know if you remember when our team did this. Like a year later, we were still debating one of our core values, like we had picked fun and positive then we decided we weren’t fun. We are fun. And then we weren’t always positive because part of how we got where we are is constantly looking at what’s not working and working to fix it. So we kept playing with it. It just didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel right until we settled on the ones that did so. It’s an exercise. Do you have tips for how a team can get there?
Beth Berman: Yeah, So a couple points with what you just discussed. One of the things about core values is we’re not looking for those core values to be absolutes, like every minute of every day that we’re behaving according to these prescriptions. It’s that most of the time we’re going to demonstrate these core values as far as getting there. The first step when I work with a team is to leave a discussion around people we admire and what do we admire about them and then kind of decipher out of that, what are the things that are really there that are most important to you that are like you and as I said, Not aspirational. For some teams, they resonate, they nail it right away. For some teams, they may believe that early on that they are a certain way. I think you guys are a lot of fun, but fun is not what drives your culture. There are other things that are strong or for you and it took time to discover that. So sometimes it’s an iterative process. Sometimes it’s right out of the box and this is who we are. Often what I find though, is that what companies have on the wall and the website is often not even close to where they are, you know, it’s refreshing when they are aligned. But it’s really a deliberate process to get to your authentic set of values and behaviors.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, that’s absolutely for sure. So once you have those, step two is Core Focus. What is that?
Beth Berman: If you think of core values as who you are, Core Focus is what you love to do and you’re best at and it’s not a marketing tool at all. It’s basically a screening tool for what you’ll say yes to and what you’ll say no, too well, let me actually back up before the for instance. So, Core Focus is comprised of two parts, one, your purpose cause or passion or why you do what you do. So beyond the profit incentive, why is it that you continue to face the challenges of running an optometry practice and coming to work every day? All of that? And next, what do you do best? And the idea between the why and the what is we want to say yes to those things where we are, have the passion around them, we are driven by them, but also where we have the highest capability where it is natural for our people to deliver on it, our processes to deliver on it so that when we’re examining opportunities, we know what we should take in because it’s a fit, we can rock it, or something that’s just going to be disruptive and really not help us grow in our core capabilities. If you think about the term core focus, it’s like you have a tennis racket and you’re hitting that ball. There’s a sweet spot and your core focus is your sweet spot in any opportunity outside of that is really something we want to say no to because it’s going to take too much effort or disrupt too much. Or maybe we won’t have the opportunity of winning because there’s no sustained passion and capability around it.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: It’s interesting to think about where this comes up in conversation. One of my soap boxes is that there’s so much free advice out there. And so we see where somebody asks a question and then they get 32 answers and they can be really different and none of them is really necessarily wrong. But they might not be right for that practice. And they could be totally right for another one. So we were in a conversation on our client email this morning about grading patients, which we’re talking about offices that have long wait for appointments. And there’s a point where it’s too long and people stop making appointments. And so how do you resolve this and we started talking about prioritizing some patients over others and blah, blah, blah. And somebody wrote in and said, We’ve never really done that. And in her office, they’ve always been focused on being accessible for everyone in the community to come into. So when they have more patients to their schedule can handle they expand. Were another practice that’s focused on delivering a specific type of care. And that’s their goals and their passion. There are lots of people who don’t fit into that type of care and acknowledging that some do and some don’t. is absolutely right for her. Were for the other one. It doesn’t make sense. So these things are practical. They’re not like just do this for the sake of the exercise. This is how you know what decisions are right in the practice. It all makes sense.
Beth Berman: If people ever, you know, experience going outside of their core capabilities and where they have their drive and their passion. They often have stories about Yeah, well we tried this. It just didn’t work in our people couldn’t sustain it, or it just wasn’t working. It didn’t feel right.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, the exact same thing could be successful two miles down the road, because it fits their focus. And it doesn’t mean if it’s yours. Alright, so you got your core values you got your core focus. 10 years target feels, that feels like super beyond aspirational. Like how do you know if you’re going to want 10 years? Is that a real thing?
Beth Berman: So first of all, the 10-year target is a trademarked term. It doesn’t have to be 10 years out, it could be five, seven, whatever’s reasonable. But what the 10-year target is, it’s kind of like a Northstar as to where you want to take the company within a given timeframe. Or take the practice within a given timeframe. And here’s the big misconception. People think that a tenure target or a be hag awful term but a big hairy audacious goal. They think it shouldn’t be about Yeah, we want to get to X number of dollars and this and that. But it typically isn’t it’s a rallying cry for the organization. It’s something that your people can get behind. So as an example, when Gino Whitman the founder of EOS had about double-digit number of clients years ago said by 2020 I’m gonna have 10,000 companies running on EOS. And in the beginning, people thought he was crazy because it was like pie in the sky number. And then they helped him build it. And they began to see once you push the flywheel and keep it going, that it was happening, it was happening and we did exceed 10,000 companies running purely on with an implementer on EOS. Well, now that we’re on a path to 100,000 companies, so what do you see? Because what you put out there is what you will create? Well, first of all, I as an EOS implementer when I think of 100,000 companies having what I call the medicine that is EOS to help companies get what they want. That’s so powerful. I see how the movie plays out with my clients over and over and over again. And to think of 100,000 companies having those extraordinary impacts, you know, having better lives, more profit, more success, better people, whatever it is they want maybe elevating out of the business as a certain head of optometry did and actually running another practice, a consulting practice as in the case of Bethany Fishbein, so it’s something that’s whatever you want from your business, you set this target and it goes to almost like the Woo-woo Power of Visioning. Because whatever it is you put out there that big number or that big achievement maybe your practices in X number of states or a practice is serving a certain type of client or whatever it is. You want it to be a rallying cry for your organization and it’s kind of like the Field of Dreams. You know, once you build it, they will come. It’s the same kind of thing, what you name it, you’re going to build to get there because that’s the goal. That’s the driving force. That’s the Northstar you’re leaning toward super powerful.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: You’re putting out all this positive energy and I don’t want to I don’t want to be the counter to it. But I have questions here.
Beth Berman: Dead good. I can outfit you know that.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Well, that’s the yin and yang here. So when you put that though, I mean the first thing that people think about is money grows multiple offices, big things. I understand the feel that you have as an implementer feeling like being part of something bigger, but I feel like in an office with staff, if you say we want to have a three location $10 million practice,
Beth Berman: Are they gonna get behind that?
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So like, how do you turn maybe a monetary goal or something that’s like a goal for you into something that your team really will feel as a rallying cry because they’re not into growth for money?
Beth Berman: Yeah, so it really depends on the team as to what kind of people you have goes back to core values and what people are going to get excited about. But it could be that you’re going to be the best and you’ve got a bunch of people who want to be the best that you’re the leader in your tri-state area in X technology, or X type of care. It could be anything. So it’s really about getting to not what the owners are going to benefit from but what is the company going to benefit from? And then as you build towards it in a three-year picture that we’ll talk about, people can get excited about the progress toward it as well.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: One more negative and then I’ll go back right up there with you. But sometimes we’re working with owners who in their 10-year plan, they want to be out.
Beth Berman: Yeah.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Their plan is to sell to somebody else in 10 years. How does that factor in?
Beth Berman: Well, that is their individual goal, but that’s not the company that’s not going to rally the cry for the company. So what is it that the company values that would be the target that’s relevant to them, and in some cases, elevating and selling out? You know, if you’ve involves, as some practice leaders and business owners, when they get to an exit, there’s a reward for their people. It really depends on what the circumstances are and where they’re going. Where is it that people can interpret value from something that is a complimentary to the owner’s goal.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: It gives us an opportunity to I think to think about the legacy that they want to leave so if they are thinking three to five years, they want to sell. We’re asking for a tenure goal. You can still have a tenure goal for the business that this is still going to be the go to spot in the county for high end eyewear in 10 years. We’re going to be serving 10,000 people a year or doing 10,000 eye exams a year. They might not be there to see it. But they’ve got a team on the path that hopefully will be even after the successor takes over.
Beth Berman: Yes, that’s very true. Okay,
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So after the 10-year target, the next step is Marketing Strategy.
Beth Berman: Yes. So with Core Values we have who we, Core Focus what we love to do and we’re best at. 10 Year target or Core Target however far we want to go plan it out is where we want to go. Now, who do we need to attract and what do we need to say to them in order to make that happen? So marketing strategy is about attracting ideal patients. ideal clients could be also applied to ideal people within the company but let’s take the patient and customers segment within Optometry. So what we want to find out first and get clear on is. Bethany, I’m sure you’ve had many patients that just were not ideal and certainly less than ideal. There’s you know, so many bumps along the road with them. They just didn’t get you you didn’t get them. And the idea there is we don’t really want to spend our marketing effort trying to attract those people. So what we want to do is we want to identify and we don’t want to spend our marketing energy and our money and our time. We want to spend it where we’re gonna get the greatest ROI with people who are going to be ideal people to work with to serve. And so we get really clear on four elements basically target market, three uniques proven process, and guarantee so target market is getting clear on who those ideal clients are. So who are they? Where are they demographics, that kind of stuff, but most importantly, what do they care about their psychographics? How do they think what do they value? Someone who wants to come in and out really quickly? Or are they someone who wants to know that they’re gonna get great care spend the time former relationship in an example for one practice versus another one that may be just the volume? Let’s get an Our eyes are one of those kinds of things where they may just want to get people through the door really quickly versus an extended kind of experience where they feel cared for. So there are different ends of the spectrum there. And so we get really clear on who we want to market to. And maybe like if you think about it, so if they’re in a certain geographic area, if they’re in a certain socio-economic strata, where would they play? Maybe they are in country clubs, maybe they are in after-school events, where would we find these people? Those kinds of things might be an extension of that. Then three Uniques, so three uniques are three things that taken together will differentiate you from everybody else out there and from your competition. So for us going back to the ideal client, in EOS our ideal clients are growth-oriented, frustrated leaders who want more, they’re willing to get open and honest. They realize that what got them here isn’t going to get them there and our uniques for that target market, our vision traction healthy, so no other company is offering a simplified system of integrated simple tools to help the team and the company ultimately get aligned around vision have the traction to execute with discipline and accountability. And then also work on Team health to have cohesive open honest fun loving teams who lack in politics and ego and emotion and are just having a great time running the business again. So three things taken together differentiate you.
Proven Process is the third of those four components and that is visual illustration, a one-page visual illustration of the client or customer or patient journey. From the time they’re thinking about working with you till they’re longtime raving fans of yours. So what we do with our clients is determined, Do you want to do this and really explain what this concept is? It can be built out in a big way around just getting a clear simple view of what the client experience is going to look like. Now, as I said, marketing strategy can be used for your patients, your customers, and all of that. But it also could be used for as you’re attracting people. Imagine if you had a proven process and you could show people, the right people. Here’s what your journey looks like. First, you’ll come in and then we have a training you meet the team and we’ll have a training session that will do this that we’re going to train and develop you and it’s going to look like this. They know you’ve got a process for helping them be the best they can be and that’s very enticing. A great sales leader once said, you want to inform people tell them but if you want to persuade people, show them and that’s just what this proven process does.
And then finally The Guarantee and the guarantee is a pledge or a promise that takes away. The last-minute hesitation when buyers or prospective patients are making that decision. There’s one little fear or I’m gonna do it, but maybe I won’t make the appointment. It’s kind of taking that fear away with a guarantee. So Marketing Strategy is really about, who you want to talk to, who you’re gonna go after what you’re going to say what you’re going to show them and how are you going to push them over the edge to make the right decision to work with you.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So now you move into your three-year picture. Talk about three-year.
Beth Berman: The three-year picture is a transition from the vision side of things to the traction side of things. So from the strategy to beginning to plan. So what we do is three years out, for example, 12/31/2025 Revenue Profit Measurable so we have some metrics there. But the most important part of this and those numbers are important. But the real impact of this is this vivid vision that we create. So the vivid vision is what will we look like three years from now. So that instead of going to this thinking, oh let’s just plan for the B hag that whatever it is that big 10-year target is. Let’s get more granular and say, how many offices will we have? Will we be in best places to work? What kinds of training and development opportunities will we have? What kinds of technology will we be using all kinds of things about what you’re going to look like as a company? What are they saying about you in the press, things like that and the idea is you put it out there it’s great crystal clear vision so you can begin to build towards it. You can also recruit into it and retain people around it. Hey, and just three years we’re doing this and then when we get to attraction side, this is how we’re building towards it. Don’t you want to be a part of this journey? Isn’t this exciting? And where are we going to celebrate when we hit those numbers as a company of this great celebration and you know, I always say of course with our EOS implementer because we like to celebrate success. I think celebration is really important. But the key here is now you can go from the three-year picture to the traction side, where we start to really plan and get to execution.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I just learned this because as you know, my husband is EOS Stickler, so he reads and rereads to make sure that we’re following all of the points. So you redo this rear target yearly.
Beth Berman: Yes. Ideally, what you’re going to do is you’re going to push it three years out, so that you’re always chasing the future that’s going to take you to your ultimate target. There are some companies that will kind of keep it because they really want to know when they hit it kind of thing. But I believe the intent is to actually set the target you always are looking three years out then you can keep adjusting it forward. It’s kind of like a school of thought about do you want to achieve it? Or do you want to keep pushing it out so that you’re always that distance away from it.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: It’s kind of neat though, to have the option to make that decision. Like to even just think about, let’s review and make sure that still is the track that we want to be on. We’ve worked with offices that are headed in one direction for a variety of reasons. And then something changes in their family something changes on their team, sometimes something changes within themselves, and their focus shifts. And so it’s neat that you get a chance to redo so it’s better to go solidly in one direction and change directions if you have to than not to go in any direction at all. So I thought it was a cool thing that was new for me.
Beth Berman: It’s a very cool thing. And it’s the idea about really getting intentional about what your future is going to look like so you can plan around it.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So the three year we’ve worked down so you’ve got this 10-year big Woowoo vision. And then three years is like a little closer to reality like this is eight here’s where we’re really planning to be. So the one year I think just make sense. It’s where are we going to be a year from now? What does that look like?
Beth Berman: Yes. So the One Year is now as I said about execution. So what we do is we look at the end of the year-end of whatever your fiscal year is, and we say where do we want to be from a revenue profit measurables? Measurables are just typically activity based numbers. So what are the metrics? But then what we do and this is very hard for my clients in the beginning and they get better and better about it. We decide what are the three to seven most important things we must achieve this year. So not 37 things, not 50 fangs. Because when everything’s important, nothing is important. One of the themes in EOS is less is more and we’re always looking to prioritize the most important thing so as we look then, as we think about the one-year plan we look towards the three-year picture and say in what’s important now in order to build towards the future we want to create in that three-year picture. What are the most important things we must get done in a company that’s running a little bit helter-skelter and maybe you not have their act fully all together, at least part of the first year one of the goals may be to get organized and get themselves in good stead to move forward and grow and build towards that future they created so it’s not always like the entire all the goals are going to be we can just okay, we named them we’re gonna get there sometimes there’s some preliminary work that we need to do to get to where we want to go because what business is as we walk into it is perfect. No first business is ever perfect. But typically there’s a setup stage to that, but what we say most important three to seven things. So what must we get done this year? In order to build towards the three-year picture? Maybe this year we need to move into office maybe this year. There’s new technology we need to implement. Maybe we need a new payroll system or accounts payable or maybe we’re outsourcing that stuff. What are some of these things that absolutely have to happen to position us for growth? Then once you have that we can be really clear about that. And should I move on to rocks?
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, go for it.
Beth Berman: Okay, because it’s kind of a natural flow. there as well. So once we have the one-year plan, we then want to move you into what we call a 90-day world with your quarterly priorities. So same deal we have revenue profit measurables and then what are the three to seven most important things first at the leadership levels, whoever the practice management practice leadership team is, what does the company need to get done? What are the most important things? And then what are our key departments? Or key functions need to get done this year? And now here’s where the goals were just about the priorities for the year now we’re executing on them. So we need to assign accountability. So we say what are the most important things what is done look like? So we say, okay, these are the things that are our priorities. Now, who’s accountable for making sure they get done? The concept of accountability is very central to EOS. We don’t just put goals out there. But who is ensuring that these results happen? So we create smart goals and in this case, just as the SMART goals in the one year plan, so specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely, now we say who’s accountable for them? So what does that mean? It means that someone is not necessarily getting all of those things done, but they’re making sure that those things happen. And that’s how we then move into a 90-day world with 90-Day goals and within EOS. There’s a meeting structure weekly to make sure we’re executing and moving forward. On those goals and so forth.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I’m always super impressed. You’ve heard me say it before, but I’m always impressed with just the elegance and simplicity of this, that it takes something that’s so complicated and turns it into something that makes sense, Right? What’s the big picture for you? Where can you reasonably see yourself getting in a couple of years? What does it look like a year from now? Let’s bring that into what needs to happen in the next 90 days to get this done? Who’s going to make sure that it gets done and then let’s follow up. It makes it feel easy. It’s not always easy to execute because all of the stuff that comes out you day to day, talk for a minute Beth, because I like it and I talk about the example a lot but talk about why it’s called rocks.
Beth Berman: So if you have a glass or a jar, this is from Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People but you think a glass and that represents your capacity, whether the amount of time that you want to devote to the work 50 hours, 80 hours, 40 hours, whatever it is, that amount of time is your limit. That’s the jar that’s holding what’s inside and inside represents your time but then you put into this glass, pebbles and those pebbles are really like your to do list with things that you just do day to day, that kind of stuff. And then also going into that glass there’s sand filling up the space, and then figuring out all the other stuff is water and you find that as the volume level rises within that jar. Human nature is such that we’re going to take that jar and we’re going to try to put our big boulders those rocks or priorities into it, because maybe we’ve procrastinated maybe we’ve said we got this big 90-day rock, this big goal. We don’t have room for it because we’ve spent our time doing all the little stuff. Had we done the rocks maybe that other stuff can be filtered in if you put them in first and focus on your most important things. And then all the other stuff can filter in and often things will come off the list because they’re no longer relevant when you look at getting done the most important things so the rocks are about managing your time, your energy, your priorities, and getting clear on what must happen and being clear. On what done look like because we’re not talking about getting it almost done. We’re talking about what can we predict that we can get done in this time period and actually get it done so that number one we can celebrate success number two, we can accomplish that and harkening back to what you just said also, one of the leadership abilities is simplifying. And EOS itself prides itself on the simplicity of the tools. We put them out there. They’re open source. It’s just not easy to execute on.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah. Executions is the challenging part. So the last piece of this is your issues and talk about issues and the issues list. It’s one of my favorite things about this.
Beth Berman: My favorite thing is issues people will look at you like. So the good news is that an EOS issues are really anything that’s worth the team’s energy to focus on. So an issue can be sure it can be a problem, an obstacle can be a challenge, but it can also be an opportunity and the idea with the issues list. On this tool the VTO or Vision Traction Organizer is that there are things that we may want to do in the business, that new technology I mentioned. Or maybe it’s really important to get that new technology or that new system in the office, but you just don’t have the bandwidth right now. It didn’t make it to the priority list on the rocks. Well, let’s park it on the VTO so it doesn’t distract us from our priorities during the quarter. So the idea on the issues list is at least this issues list to get it out of our head, put it on this list, know that the end of the quarter, we’re going to look at that again and say, Is this something we want to prioritize now? Do we have the bandwidth to do this now? Is it important now? We always want to be chasing not what’s urgent but what’s most important to do. And we don’t want to distract from our rocks with, oh well there’s a new something or other a new shiny object that our visionary decided was be exciting. Let’s look at this now. Well, now we’ve got our priorities, okay. And only if we process that issue and find if it’s an issue that someone brings forward and decides is important enough to talk about your weekly meetings. Only then could we possibly decide that it’s important enough to bring into the quarter and actually, if we’re going to have the capacity to do it, it makes sense to pursue it but typically, we focus on our rocks every so often we have an exception, but not often. We get better and better about planning and understanding that there’s a whole practice around issue solving and issue management. Within EOS. It’s super powerful. But the idea here is we are just humans we’re distractible. We are all these sleepless nights with all these issues in our head. Put them on a list somewhere go back to sleep, focus on what you need the most important things go on vacation move on.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I love it and one of the best parts of this whole thing is that this entire VTO if you’re doing it on like your notebook, writing paper kind of person. This is a two-sided sheet of paper. This is one sheet.
Beth Berman: The tools look a little bit like kindergarten but they are so powerful and it’s across industries across all kinds of clients. I have everything from government contractors in cybersecurity, do optometry companies, to gyms to manufacturers. I mean, it’s amazing. I’m truly amazed by the simplicity and efficacy of this system. It’s just, it’s joyed to do this work.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I love that. And Beth I am amazed by you as always and the clarity that you bring to the EOS tools and the teams that use them. I think this is something that, as you said seems simple but is something that you get better and better at as you use it more and improve, and studying this and learning this for me has been an absolute pleasure. It’s changed my business. It’s infiltrated. That’s a negative word, but it’s made its way into the work we do a Power Practice internally and with our clients and just keeps getting better. So thank you so much for sharing it if somebody wants more best, where do they find you
Beth Berman: So they can find me on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/growthdc/, My email is beth.berman@EOSworldwide.com. and I’m happy to help!
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Thank you and for anyone listening. If you’re interested in learning more about Power Practice you can find us online at www.powerpractice.com Looking forward to giving more end-of-year information soon. thank you so much.