The Hidden Myth That Keeps Good Teams from Becoming Great

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Do you want people treating your company like a renter or an owner?

There’s a common belief that quietly holds back even the best teams. It shows up in town halls, performance reviews, and leadership offsites. Most leaders I work with have said it at some point. Heck, I’ve said it too!

“If our people are committed, we’re good to go.”

It sounds reasonable. Even admirable. Commitment means loyalty, motivation, and alignment with your mission. It’s the same reason you go to Hertz, Avis, Sixt, or other favorites on travel.

But here’s the catch: Did you ever wash a rental car? 

Commitment is the starting gate, not the finish line.

If you want to build a business that doesn’t rely on you being in every meeting, approving every decision, and putting out every fire, you need something more powerful than commitment. You need ownership.

Unwavering Inspiration graphic on great teams.

The Difference Between Commitment and Ownership

Think of commitment as showing up, caring, and supporting the mission. It’s the foundation of an unstoppable workforce.

But ownership?

That’s where your people take the reins.

✅ Owners solve problems before they land on your desk
✅ Owners make decisions in line with the company’s best interest
✅ Owners act like the company’s success depends on them, because they believe it does

They treat your company as if it were their own car, because they want it to look great, be great, and last.

They are accountable in the truest sense: to the mission, to each other, and to the people they serve.

Why the Myth Persists

So why do so many leaders stop at commitment?

Here’s what I’ve seen:

  • Success with commitment creates complacency. If the wheels are turning, why fix what’s “working”?
  • Fear of loss of control. Autonomy can feel like a threat to consistency.
  • Engagement systems like EOS, while well-meaning, focus on alignment without fostering real agency. The result? Teams that are informed but still permission-seeking.

The leaders I admire most in business and the military champion ownership. They want people to feel a consequential stake in the company’s success, so they care for the company’s growth and well-being just as they would for their own car or home.

Sounds awesome? You have to show that same sense of ownership about their growth and well-being first. 

How well do you know their aspirations, their spouse’s name, significant days of the year, important causes, and milestones?

Questions for the Week

  • Where are your people showing commitment but not yet ownership?
  • Where might you be inadvertently encouraging permission-seeking?

What’s one decision you can delegate this week and not take back?

Ownership doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because leaders like you choose to make it safe, clear, and expected.

If you’d like a 2-minute diagnostic to gauge your team’s ownership mindset, drop me a note. I’ll send it your way. You’re building something important. Let’s make sure your team feels ownership in its success, too.

How CEOs Can Win in Business Like a Legendary General

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Learn from this legendary general and accelerate your business success.

Great leaders learn from history. The Battle of Zama (202 BCE), the decisive clash between Rome and Carthage in the Second Punic War, offers timeless leadership and strategy lessons that CEOs and founders can apply today.

At Zama, the Roman general Scipio Africanus outmaneuvered the legendary Hannibal, securing Rome’s dominance over the Mediterranean. His victory wasn’t about brute force—it was the result of disciplined foresight, which moves you from fleeting results to durable success, and empowering oversight, which transforms micro-management into inspiring ingenuity.

Here are three critical business lessons from this historic battle.

The Battle of Zama: 3 Critical Business Lessons 

1. Pattern Recognition

Hannibal was a tactical genius, famous for his unexpected moves—like marching elephants over the Alps. But by the time of Zama, he relied on the same playbook that had won his earlier victories. Scipio, on the other hand, studied Hannibal’s methods and adapted. Instead of meeting force with force, he created lanes in his formation to neutralize Hannibal’s war elephants, turning Carthage’s strength into a weakness.

Business Insight: Too many companies stick to what worked in the past, even when market conditions change. Blockbuster clung to its brick-and-mortar model while Netflix adapted to streaming. Sears ignored e-commerce while Amazon mastered it. Winning leaders anticipate shifts, study competitors, and pivot before circumstances force them to.

CEO Takeaway: How expertly do you detect what’s really going on?

Red = I react to symptoms and guess at causes.

Green = Like Scipio, I quickly diagnose and act on causes.

Chris and Nicole - business success.

2. Building Enthusiastic Engagement

Before Zama, Scipio didn’t just recruit soldiers—he built an army with a shared purpose. He trained them relentlessly, ensured discipline, and inspired deep loyalty. By contrast, Hannibal’s forces were a mix of mercenaries, local recruits, and war elephants—impressive, but lacking unity and long-term commitment.

Business Insight: Companies that succeed don’t just hire talent; they cultivate commitment. A disengaged workforce can be just as dangerous as an untrained army. If your team is fragmented—sales working against operations, marketing disconnected from product development—you’re at a disadvantage. The best leaders create an inspiring culture where people buy into the mission, not just the paycheck.

CEO Takeaway: How passionately do your people go above expectations?

Red = People do the minimum and wait for direction.

Green = People go the extra mile voluntarily.

3. Simple Strategies Create Unbeatable Positioning

Scipio didn’t just react to Hannibal—he dictated the terms of battle. He forced the fight on ground that favored Rome, used superior cavalry to cut off retreat, and executed his plan with precision. He understood that strategy isn’t about reacting to competitors—it’s about setting the stage for your own success.

Business Insight: Many businesses get caught in reactive cycles, constantly responding to market shifts, competitors, or economic downturns. The best leaders don’t just fight battles—they choose which battles to fight and on what terms. Apple didn’t enter the MP3 market with just another player; they created the iPod and changed the game. Tesla didn’t compete on traditional auto industry terms; they set the pace for electric vehicles.

CEO Takeaway: How relentlessly do you create focus and momentum?

Red = We do too much, which leads to confusion.

Green = Our flywheel turns on its own power.

Final Thought: Lead Like Scipio

Victory at Zama wasn’t about brute force—it was about using disciplined foresight to place an unstoppable force in an unbeatable position. Are you leading like Scipio?

P.S. Leadership is one of the many topics we can explore on an adventure offsite for your company. These offsites at national parks and historic battlefields open minds and strengthen trust because you are in the fresh air, experiencing awe, and creating shared visual models that propel your business forward.

Sound interesting? Let’s have a strategy call to see if it’s right for you.

What Trump’s Tariffs Reveal About Innovation

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Trump’s tariffs and Captain Tom Bostick’s battlefield strategy illustrate two contrasting approaches to innovation.

A large enemy force tried to overrun our small outpost near Kamu, Afghanistan. The outpost was deep in a glacier-cut mountain valley. The enemy fired at the outpost from across the river, trying to fix our attention, while a strike force moved from the southwest.

The commander, Captain Tom Bostick, deployed scouts who discovered the attacking force. Tom set an ambush and annihilated them before turning his attention across the river.

He thought the enemy had their command post in a mountain cave overlooking the outpost. He directed 30mm cannon fire from the A-10 Warthog to the cliff face. “They are shooting above us,” the enemy commander said over the walkie-talkie, which Tom’s interpreter monitored.

Tom directed the aircraft to fire higher up. “They are shooting below us,” announced the excited voice. Tom and the A-10 pilot had the enemy bracketed. The pilot spotted the cave, spewing 30mm into it while his wingman lined up a 500lb bomb. 

“Pray for us,” was the enemy’s last transmission.

Tom used reconnaissance by fire to reveal the enemy’s location before dropping the remaining 500lb bomb. 

Trump’s Tariff Policy: The Opposite Approach

President Trump’s tariff policy takes the opposite approach. Massive Liberation Day tariffs roiled markets. The President paused them, then imposed more. The exceptions and exemptions seem to roll out daily. 

There are excellent reasons to impose tariffs. The big strike and chaotic back-and-forth create an impression of incompetence, but everything may work out.

The examples illustrate two approaches to innovation. Tom’s approach was to use small bullets to test the market, so to speak, before dropping the big bomb.

President Trump’s tariff policy drops the big bomb first and adjusts based on the fallout.

Which approach is better for your business?

P.S. Innovation is one of the many topics we can explore on an adventure offsite for your company. These offsites at national parks and historic battlefields open minds and strengthen trust because you are in the fresh air, experiencing awe, and creating shared visual models that propel your business forward.

Sound interesting? Let’s have a strategy call to see if it’s right for you.

Project Confidence & Lead Under Fire

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Great leaders know how to lead in a crisis—do you?

Crisis reveals your character. In business, just as on the battlefield, leaders set the tone. When the pressure mounts—whether from a market downturn, a major acquisition, or a crisis threatening your company’s reputation—your team looks to you. Do you show unshakable business judgment, or hesitate and equivocate?

At Antietam and Gettysburg, the greatest commanders didn’t lead from behind. They rode the front lines, making themselves visible to their troops. Leaders on horseback are the most vulnerable soldiers on the battlefield. The message was clear: if I can do my job while everyone is shooting at me, so can you. When dismounted, they led from the front. Think of Joshua Chamberlain at Little Round Top, standing firm against overwhelming odds. His soldiers held the line because they saw him do it first.

Business is no different. People take their cues from you. If you’re rattled, they’ll falter. If you’re resolute, they’ll execute. Leading under fire means setting the example, issuing clear guidance, and ensuring your people know the path forward—even when uncertainty is at its peak.

Modern Application: Alan Mulally at Ford

In 2006, Ford was in freefall—hemorrhaging billions, drowning in bureaucracy, and losing market share to foreign competitors. Then came Alan Mulally. He didn’t panic, blame external factors, or retreat behind closed doors. He projected confidence and took decisive action. His turnaround playbook? A simple strategy, empowering accountability, and sound execution.

Mulally introduced the “One Ford” plan, requiring brutal honesty in leadership meetings—executives had to bring problems to the table instead of hiding them. He kept his messaging simple and consistent: “We have a plan, and we are going to make it work.” He cut through silos, made himself present, and ensured his people knew that despite the crisis, Ford would win.

The result? Ford not only survived the 2008 financial crisis without a bailout, but emerged as a global leader again. The lesson: when your company faces adversity, your confidence and clarity set the course.

Practical Application

✔ Be visible and present. In times of crisis, don’t retreat behind reports and emails. Walk the floor, get in the field, and look your people in the eye.

✔ Control your emotions. You don’t have to have all the answers, but your demeanor must signal that you have control. Confidence is contagious.

✔ Speak with clarity and conviction. Whether it’s an internal town hall or an external investor call, people don’t just listen to what you say; they read how you say it.

Mulally possessed Courageous Insight. He was the leader on horseback, exemplifying the values, speaking plainly, and acting boldly.

Schedule a free strategy call today.

Disciplined Initiative and Precision Delegation: Leadership Lessons from Gettysburg

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Gettysburg offers powerful leadership lessons in disciplined initiative and precision delegation.

History rewards decisive leaders. But in business, as in battle, action without alignment is a liability. At Gettysburg, we see two contrasting leadership styles—one leader who exercised disciplined initiative to shift the tide of battle and another whose unchecked independence left his forces vulnerable.

For CEOs leading $100M+ companies, the lesson is clear: Encourage bold decision-making, but ensure it serves the broader mission. Likewise, delegation must be more than task distribution—it must be precise, intentional, and structured around the common good.

Encourage Disciplined Initiative Without Losing Strategic Control

When Union General John Buford arrived at Gettysburg on June 30, 1863, he saw what others might have missed—the high ground surrounding the town was the key to victory. Despite being outnumbered, he exercised disciplined initiative, taking a bold stand that delayed the Confederate advance and allowed Union reinforcements to seize the battlefield’s strategic advantage.

Contrast that with Confederate General Jeb Stuart. Tasked with gathering intelligence, Stuart instead pursued personal glory, riding deep into enemy territory while failing to update General Lee. As a result, Lee’s army was left blind and vulnerable, forced to react rather than dictate the battle’s terms.

Business Example: Apple’s Calculated Risk vs. Uber’s Early Recklessness

Steve Jobs’ decision to focus Apple on a limited number of high-quality products—Mac, iPod, iPhone—was a perfect example of disciplined initiative. Instead of chasing every tech trend, he empowered his teams to innovate within clear strategic guardrails, resulting in category-defining products.

Contrast this with Uber’s early years. While their aggressive expansion helped them dominate markets quickly, their leadership failed to keep initiatives aligned with long-term stability. Cultural issues, regulatory battles, and unchecked risk-taking forced Uber into damage control mode, much like Lee at Gettysburg.

The lesson? CEOs must cultivate disciplined initiative—empowering leaders to make bold, independent decisions, but always within the framework of advancing the company’s mission. Initiative without alignment, like Stuart’s, creates chaos. Initiative with discipline, like Buford’s, creates opportunity.

Ask yourself: Have I created a culture where leaders act decisively and in full alignment with the company’s broader strategy?

Delegate with Precision & Intent

General John Reynolds exemplified precision delegation. When he arrived at Gettysburg to reinforce Buford, he didn’t micromanage—he provided clear guidance, trusted his officers, and let them execute. His leadership structure turned the Union forces into a disciplined, fast-moving unit that secured a decisive early advantage.

Delegating with precision and intent isn’t just about handing off responsibility—it’s about being precise in defining the common good (mission, vision, and standards) and setting clear boundaries on a leader’s latitude. When done well, this creates a leadership team that moves as one, making faster and more aligned decisions.

Business Example: Amazon’s Leadership Principles vs. Boeing’s Delegation Failures

Amazon’s leadership principles allow teams to act with autonomy—but always within the company’s mission of customer obsession, long-term thinking, and operational excellence. Jeff Bezos designed a culture where teams had clear decision-making authority, but guardrails kept them aligned. This precision delegation enabled rapid innovation without losing control.

Contrast this with Boeing’s 737 MAX crisis. Engineers raised concerns, but leadership had created a fragmented structure where accountability was unclear. Decisions that should have been aligned with Boeing’s core standards were instead made in silos, leading to devastating consequences.

Leaders who fail to delegate with intent create two types of dysfunction:

  • Unclear boundaries—where leaders give too much freedom without clear boundaries and standards, leading to misguided action and freelancing.
  • Micro-management—where leaders hold too tightly to decision-making, slowing down the organization and creating bottlenecks..

The key is to provide clarity on:

  1. The mission, vision, and standards that define success.
  2. The specific boundaries within which subordinates have the latitude to make decisions.

When leaders have this structure, they don’t wait for permission—they execute decisively while staying aligned with the organization’s purpose.

Bringing It All Together

At the highest levels, business success hinges on disciplined initiative and precision delegation.

  • Do your leaders have the freedom to act in ways that advance the company’s mission?
  • Have you defined clear decision-making boundaries to ensure alignment without micromanagement?

The leaders who master these dynamics don’t just win battles—they make an enduring transformative contribution. Let’s connect and explore how you can do the same—schedule a call today!

How I Help Trailblazers

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Learn how trailblazers gain a decisive competitive advantage in any market.

Armies fight with weapons and businesses compete with products and services. In both cases, people win the victories.

The paradox of success: When I led 800 paratroopers in the mountains of Afghanistan, every day was a battle for survival. We were winning every battle, but each victory seemed to bring even greater challenges. After 90 days, four of our troopers were killed, and scores were wounded. Our metrics indicated success, but I felt the conflict was getting worse. The people we thought we were helping were, in many cases, the same ones trying to kill us.  

Recognizing the need for change: The best businesses often face similar situations. You are winning the battles and bringing in revenues, and your team is proud of what they are achieving. But you feel the ground shifting under your feet. Gaining a decisive competitive advantage feels just out of reach. You need buy-in for strategic innovation, but your people might not yet see the need for change. Doing the same things in the same ways won’t get the same results if your competitors are innovating. Just ask Sears or Blockbuster. 

Back in Afghanistan, it was clear to me that the ground was shifting. If we kept doing the same things, we’d keep getting the same or worse results. But deviating from the playbook was risky—it meant going against deeply entrenched norms. The pressure to “stay the course” was intense. Yet, it was also clear that staying the course meant no path to success. We needed to blaze a new trail. 

Lessons From Afghanistan: A Transformation Framework

The turning point came when I stopped seeing the Taliban purely as enemies and started seeing them as human beings driven by practical grievances—ones that we could potentially address. This insight ignited a new approach: we needed to spend less time chasing bad guys and more time building allies. CEOs must innovate, too, but earning buy-in can be challenging. 

3 Pillars to Gain a Decisive Competitive Advantage

The trailblazing owners and CEOs who work with me implement three pillars to gain a decisive competitive advantage: 

1. Winning Strategy: We moved from an enemy-focused strategy to one built on partnership and mutual benefit—just as businesses must often pivot from competing on price to offering superior value. 

2. Inspiring Culture: We refocused our unit’s culture from ‘destroy the enemy’ to ‘build lasting alliances’—similar to how the best companies shift from short-term results to long-term value creation. 

3. Empowering Leadership: We developed leadership behaviors that built trust within our ranks and with local leaders, paralleling how successful CEOs must build trust across their organization and with stakeholders. 

It wasn’t easy, but we innovated successfully. Six months later, the biggest insurgent group in the area stopped fighting and started working with us, giving us a decisive competitive advantage. It was the only example of such an outcome in the 20-year history of the war.

Turning High-Stakes Challenges Into a Decisive Competitive Advantage

CEOs of $100M+ companies face their own high-stakes challenges: market disruption, evolving employee expectations, fierce competition, and the constant pressure to innovate. Drawing from my military, academic, and business experiences, I help them close the gap between their performance and potential by turning high-stakes challenges into a decisive competitive advantage through a winning strategy, an inspiring culture, and empowering leadership. 

Why It Matters: Making an Enduring Positive Contribution

For the people I work with, a decisive competitive advantage is not an end in itself. You use it to make an enduring positive contribution: providing a joyful workplace, advancing employee livelihoods, and strengthening your communities. What works in the military doesn’t always work in business, and vice versa. But, organizations that develop a winning strategy, build an inspiring culture, and promote empowering leadership behaviors will succeed in a competitive, ever-changing market. 

When the stakes are highest, conventional wisdom often fails us. But any organization can transform its most significant challenges into opportunities with the right strategy, culture, and leadership. That’s what I learned in Afghanistan, and that’s what I help trailblazing CEOs achieve today. My clients, including CEOs, Cabinet-level officials, 4-Star Generals, Police and Fire Chiefs, and NFL teams, have grown by over $100 million and counting.

Let’s Have a Meaningful Conversation

Would you be interested in a strategy call about closing the gap between your performance and potential? A strategy call has two main objectives. First, and most importantly, is to deliver value to you. By the time we’re done, you will have gained something of significant value – it might be an idea, some perspective, or an insight into your situation.

Once we’ve had that part of the discussion and you feel that you’ve gotten that value, then we can address if and how I might be able to support you. At that point, we can decide to work together or not work together, and either way is fine. There’s no pressure. Does that work for you? If so, schedule a time.

When Failure Is the Best Option

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Discover why and when failure could be your secret weapon for success.

Everything until 1862 came easy for U.S. Civil War General George B. McClellan. He graduated at the top of his West Point class, served with distinction in the war with Mexico, became a successful railroad manager, and became the top leader of Union military forces after defeating the Confederates in a small battle near Beverly, Virginia. He seemed to live a charmed life. 

However, he never developed the skills to handle setbacks and failures. Commanding the Army of the Potomac, McClellan was repeatedly outmaneuvered by more experienced Confederate generals. Soon, McClellan grew exceedingly cautious, made excuses, inflated Confederate military numbers by two to three times, and even blamed President Lincoln for not sending enough forces.   

His extreme fear of failure led him to miss two opportunities to end the Civil War in 1862, including the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day in American history. [My next leadership event at the Antietam & Gettysburg battlefields is May 6-9, 2025.]

McClellan’s example shows the importance of learning from failures. Here are some examples of when failing is better than clinging stubbornly to ideas that aren’t working or doubling down.

6 Examples of When Failing Is Better

1. Testing Innovation and New Ideas

  • Scenario: A company tests an innovative product or service, knowing it could fail.
  • Why Failure is Better: An experimental project’s failure helps the company learn what doesn’t work without risking the core business. It’s often better to fail quickly and inexpensively in a test phase rather than launch an unproven idea at full scale.
  • Example: Many tech companies conduct A/B testing to deliberately push boundaries, expecting some variations to fail, leading to valuable insights.

2. Challenging Assumptions

  • Scenario: Business leaders pursue a strategy challenging deeply held assumptions or norms.
  • Why Failure is Better: When leaders explore new market segments or operational methods that go against the grain, failure can reveal flaws in old assumptions. This can lead to breakthroughs, pushing the company to evolve or pivot into more successful strategies.
  • Example: Netflix’s early shift from DVDs to streaming initially faced skepticism but led to a dominant new business model. Blockbuster rode the old model into bankruptcy.

3. Encouraging Risk-Taking and Creativity

  • Scenario: A company fosters a culture of encouraging employees to take risks and explore new ideas.
  • Why Failure is Better: Failure in this environment promotes a growth mindset, signaling employees that mistakes are acceptable as long as they learn and improve. This fosters creativity and innovation over a long period, driving success.
  • Example: Google’s “20% time” policy allowed employees to work on side projects, some of which failed, while others led to significant innovations like Gmail.

4. Avoiding Bigger, Catastrophic Failures

  • Scenario: Small failures are used as learning opportunities to avoid more significant, company-wide issues.
  • Why Failure is Better: Small, controlled failures help identify vulnerabilities before they spiral into unmanageable crises. It’s often better to allow small risks to materialize and correct course early rather than suppressing them and facing a massive failure later.
  • Example: Agile software development emphasizes iterative failures to catch errors quickly and prevent large-scale product issues.

5. Cultural and Organizational Development

  • Scenario: A new leadership initiative aimed at improving culture or decision-making fails.
  • Why Failure is Better: Failure in these initiatives can expose underlying cultural issues, resistance to change, or blind spots in leadership. This feedback can lead to better alignment between company values and actions in the future.
  • Example: Leadership programs emphasizing open communication and transparency may initially encounter resistance, but this failure can surface communication gaps that must be addressed for future success.

6. Sustaining Long-Term Competitiveness

  • Scenario: A company pursues a bold, long-term strategy that might fail in the short term.
  • Why Failure is Better: In some cases, short-term failure is part of the price for long-term competitiveness. Companies willing to take long-term bets (even at the risk of short-term failures) often position themselves to outlast competitors.
  • Example: Amazon’s early focus on growth over profitability was seen as a failure by some, but it ultimately established the company as a dominant global player.

If you’re facing challenges in navigating failure and learning from it within your own organization, I’d love to help. Schedule a call with me to discuss how you can embrace failure strategically and transform it into long-term success.

How to Shorten Your L10 Meetings While Increasing Your Impact

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Learn how to transform your L10 meetings into efficient and solutions-oriented sessions.

I used to think that the purpose of meetings was to share important information and boost accountability. Participants highlighted what they achieved and learned; we reviewed stop-light charts and metrics to assess progress and compliance. I grew up participating in such meetings, which seemed normal and practical.

Years later, I looked around the room during a staff meeting. We had around 30 attendees. I listened as they read the PowerPoint bullets from their slides, highlighted the numbers on their charts, and explained any discrepancies.

Why was I having intelligent people read out loud to other intelligent people looking at the same charts? 

A staff member suggested we share the charts in advance and create an agenda focused on solving problems and coordinating solutions. Brilliant! I could free people to do their jobs. We accomplished more in half the time. People saw meetings as valuable instead of soul-sucking. 

EOS L10 meetings suffer from the same problems I was inflicting on my teams.

EOS’s weekly L10 meeting envisions 90 minutes per session. That’s 78 hours of L10 meetings in a year. If you and the ten people in the meeting make an average of $100 per hour, that’s $780,000 invested in these meetings.

What if you cut that number in half? What could you do with 39 hours of additional time?

Cutting that time in half is easy once you take my staff officer’s advice. Use shared documents to convey information and devote your meeting time to making decisions and coordinating solutions. Reading slides or information bullets out loud insults everyone’s intelligence. 

Breaking Down L10 Meetings to Reduce Wasted Time: 4 Steps

Here’s how to break down your typical L10 meeting to reduce wasted time:

Step 1: Gather information asynchronously into a shared document or dashboard.

  1. Weekly Scorecard Metrics. Perfect for a dashboard. Periodically assess them to avoid metric mayhem.
  2. Rock Updates (Rock is EOS jargon for quarterly goals). See above.
  3. To-Do List Updates. Mark completed tasks and provide short comments on any delays in a shared task management tool (e.g., Asana, Trello, or a shared spreadsheet).
  4. Customer and Employee Headlines. Flag items requiring discussion.

Step 2: Prepare the meeting agenda and prioritize the issues for discussion and resolution. Give participants 24 hours to review the agenda and the read-ahead materials.

Step 3: Use the meeting to tackle your top 3 cross-cutting issues. Identify the problem you want to solve, discuss options, and decide. Work on individualized issues separately. Keep the meeting to 45 minutes or less. 

Step 4: Make Commitments. I learned this approach from Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence. Review each item on the to-do list and ask the responsible individual if they can accomplish the task by the deadline. That simple public commitment, Cialdini says, increases compliance dramatically. 

Let me know how this approach works by hitting reply and sending me a quick note. 

Overcoming EOS Metric Mayhem

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EOS metric overload? Discover actionable steps to simplify your metrics and help your team focus on real work.

“It is impossible,” scientist Werner Heisenberg said with his uncertainty principle, “to simultaneously know both the exact position and the exact momentum of a particle.”

In simpler terms, measuring something changes the thing being measured.

I saw this principle operating in Afghanistan. The 4-star general believed that the allies would gain the upper hand when “offensive engagements” outnumbered “enemy-initiated attacks.” This change, he believed, was a leading indicator that we were turning the corner. 

Measuring this distinction without a difference created incentives to classify an incident as an offensive engagement. After a few months, the metrics showed what the general hoped to see, even as success in the war was circling the drain.

Metric Mayhem

Gino Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) has helped many companies organize for success and develop metrics that boost accountability. As I noted last week, you have to customize the system to meet your needs rather than contorting your company to comply with it.

In addition to meeting madness, my clients and contacts complain about metric mayhem. Excessive metrics can lead to confusion, wasted resources, and diminished focus on what drives business success. When companies measure too many metrics or track irrelevant data, they can experience:

  • Data overload by gathering input and assembling reports of dubious value. Data overload can obscure what’s vitally important for your business.
  • Analysis paralysis results when leaders spend too much time analyzing data and looking for elusive leading indicators that tend to confuse correlation with causation.
  • Mouse-turd metrics that cost significant energy to gather but have little relevance for strategic decisions.
  • Resource drain as you buy analytic tools and hire analysts to deal with the overload and paralysis. After pivoting way too late, Sears went broke with metric madness as it tried to compete with Amazon.

5 Ways to Reduce EOS Metric Mayhem

1. Start small and simple. Profit margin, employee attrition, ideal customer retention, and brand reputation are an excellent start for strategic measures. 

2. Remove metrics that aren’t providing you with actionable insights. Just because you can measure a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) does not mean you should. Review your quarterly metrics and consider if each one makes the cut if you created new KPIs today.

3. Consider the perverse incentives. Do you have a version of what I noted in Afghanistan? Measuring the number of sales calls, for example, can create perverse incentives to call non-ideal clients so you can pad the numbers. Paying sales officials based on revenue while not considering profitability could drive you out of business. How many attorneys create unnecessary work for themselves to maximize billable hours? 

4. Be careful with leading indicators. Past performance, financial professionals say, is no guarantee of future results. If the past were an accurate portrayal of the future, we would have already reached the end of history. Those who believe in leading indicators tend to reduce complexity to a silver bullet variable more predictive of false positives and negatives, correlation over causality, collection bias, and other problems.

5. Big judgment trumps big data (I’m paraphrasing Alan Weiss here). The search for data-driven magic bullets is information-age fool’s gold. Sometimes, you are better off evaluating than measuring. You can evaluate if leaders are becoming better problem solvers and employees are working better together, for example, more readily than you can measure these matters quantitatively. 

By honing in on the most critical metrics and streamlining data processes, companies can enhance focus, improve decision-making, and better allocate resources—ultimately driving better results without the burden of metric madness.

“Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.” – George Santayana

If you feel your company is experiencing metric mayhem, schedule a call so we can discuss your situation. I’ll give you action steps to implement immediately so people can work instead of spending their time measuring it.

Eliminating EOS Meeting Madness

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Learn more about EOS meeting madness symptoms and ways to remedy them.

EOS is a powerful system that’s helped many companies organize for success. As with any overarching system, you have to customize it to meet your needs rather than contorting your company to comply with the system.

EOS meeting madness is a triumph of rules over outcomes. 

Do your employees experience two or more of these symptoms?

Meeting Fatigue: Your employees report feeling drained and disengaged due to frequent and lengthy meetings, often without clear outcomes.

Reduced Productivity: Your employees complain they spend more time in meetings than executing priorities, which causes them to fall behind on their work or lose focus on essential tasks.

Redundant Discussions: Your employees note that meetings rehash the same issues without clear resolutions.

Low Engagement in Meetings: Your employees multi-task or disengage during meetings, indicating that meetings are not a good use of their time.

Long or Overloaded Level 10 Meetings: Your meetings stretch well over 90 minutes because they are consumed with granular issues.

Complaining about two or more issues means your company is experiencing EOS meeting madness. This madness stems from overreliance on structured meetings, inadequate meeting clarity, and too much time spent on topics that could be handled asynchronously. 

If not treated correctly, EOS meeting madness will undermine productivity and profitability while frustration and fatigue grow.

Ways to Remedy EOS Meeting Madness

Here are some ways to remedy EOS meeting madness.

1. Set a Clear Meeting Purpose and Agenda 

  • Your meeting should have a clear purpose tied to a decision or coordination. Examples:
    • This recurring meeting identifies and solves the company’s top three friction points.
    • The purpose of this meeting is to decide our marketing strategy.
    • This meeting coordinates the significant activities for [upcoming event, new product production, etc.]
  • You should avoid information-sharing meetings, as they waste everyone’s time. Instead, use a dashboard or shared document to convey information.
  • Your meeting should include an agenda focusing on essential issues and avoid allowing small, non-urgent topics to take up time.
  • Include a read-ahead that participants get 24 hours in advance. If it’s not ready by then, devote the first five minutes of the meeting to having people consume the read-ahead so everyone operates from shared facts, and you avoid wasting time.
  • Assign accountability: Identify who is responsible for each action item, the purpose of the action, and when it is due.

2. Shorten Meetings and Make Them Purpose-Driven

  • Reduce your meetings to 45 or 50 minutes. The read-ahead format makes this easy, so people don’t drone-on with their information updates. You also gain a 10-15-minute buffer before your next activity to reset and refocus.
  • Experiment with Shorter Meetings: Try 30-minute “pulse” meetings, which are feasible when you are clear on the meeting purpose and arm participants with the read-ahead.

3. Clarify Meeting Necessity and Frequency

  • Reduce Meeting Frequency: Some issues don’t need weekly discussion. Determine which meetings can be held biweekly or monthly without losing impact.
  • Use Asynchronous Updates: Share routine information using shared documents, dashboards, or short video updates, freeing up time in live meetings.

4. If a discussion about an agenda item goes overboard, put it in a parking lot and schedule a separate decision meeting to address it.

5. Use scorecard software that tracks metrics, reducing the need for extensive metric reviews in meetings.

Use these steps to reap the benefits of EOS without succumbing to “meeting madness.” 

According to a recent Harris poll, miscommunication causes the average company to lose eight hours per week per employee. Time spent in unproductive meetings adds to the toll. I encourage my clients to use an outside observer to identify cases of EOS meeting madness (your average EOS implementer can’t do this because they prioritize the system over your company) and help you take action to cure it.

If you feel your company is experiencing EOS meeting madness, schedule a call so we can discuss your situation. I’ll give you action steps to implement immediately so people can return to work.