Speaker 1 (00:00):
Because I know many of you are using have tried using or are curious about using EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system to help you scale your business. I wanted to do an episode about it. So I reached out to a friend of mine who's very connected in the EOS community and he introduced me to Harvey Jurgen, you'll find out right off the top of this episode why he's the right person to talk EOS for your real estate team, what EOS is, who it's designed for, and how it helps you scale faster. Where the terms visionary and integrator came from and what exactly they mean. And it's a little bit different than most people popularly use them. Two questions to ask to know if you're using EOS effectively, how to get started with the os. Three things that'll help you and whether you can just do it yourself. Get all that and much more right now with Harvey Jurgen on Real estate team os

Speaker 2 (00:48):
No matter where your business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to Team Os, your guide to starting, growing and optimizing real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Harvey, I am so glad that we've connected. I'm excited to walk and talk through EOS at a basic level, but then also share some tips for people who do have a program like that implemented in their business. Welcome to Real Estate Team os.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Thank you Ethan. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Our standard opener on the show is what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
What's coming to mind is some things that we teach around trust and really the only way to build trust is to be vulnerable and if you're going to be a team, especially if you're going to lead a team, you've got to lead with vulnerability so that you create an atmosphere of vulnerability, which is really the only way to create a real atmosphere of trust.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, really good. So I think some folks listening are like, oh heck yeah, and maybe some other folks are listening and saying vulnerability. Oh, come on. I would be in that former camp, not the latter camp, but dumb down vulnerability a little bit. What is it about vulnerability that is so a valuable to a team dynamic and then be so key to building trust?

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Vulnerability is me saying to you right now, Ethan, that I'm a little nervous, that I'm worried that my camera isn't working, that our video's going to lag, that I'm going to look stupid. These things that we often keep hidden inside of us because they're a little scary to admit is getting them out and presenting them and really that's what other people want. There's nothing more than I want is to hear a real piece of your heart is something that's really true to you because then I can, oh, okay, I'm safe here and now I can share this thing that has been really eating me too, that I was a little bit nervous to say and now we're having a real conversation and now you can trust me a little bit more. I can trust you a little bit more. And with that trust that we're establishing now when inevitably real hard stuff happens in the day-to-day of our business, I don't have to bury it. We don't have to ignore it. We can deal with issues quickly, which is what we have to do as teams to move forward without having to deal with everything else. That's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, it's really good and so much of it. I think one of the reasons a lot of folks are not in touch with that in a conscious or intentional way is that so much of that activity is subconscious and the word that triggered that for me was your use of the word safe there and it's all human beings have been looking for since we've been whatever version of mammal we are today, homo sapiens is to feel safe and confident in the situation around us so that we can operate and do whatever we're meant to do. And so that ability to be honest and be open and be vulnerable with folks and creating that as a present in the moment or as even a cultural component of how we work around here opens everything up to go faster. I think that's one of the main benefits of trust is that we can stop wasting time and worrying.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Does he mean what he says? Is he just putting this on? Is he fronting? We don't have to think about or talk about any of that stuff. We can just go solve problems. So one of the reasons I'm so excited to have you on the show is that you both have some exposure to the real estate business. You were a licensed agent and property manager among other things in the industry. You're also an EOS implementer. You're helping businesses literally of all kinds implement EOS or the entrepreneurial operating system in your business. I'd love just for folks to get a sense of your background including things maybe like a chief logistics officer with the US Army Corps of Engineers, like your hardcore logistics guy, at least as part of your experience. I would love for you to characterize your background for folks for context on why you're the right guy to talk EOS, especially to a real estate team audience.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yeah. My journey starts as an athlete. I was a division one baseball player as you'd imagine that took decades of doing baseball stuff, so that's really where I was forged let's say in athletics. After college, I wasn't good enough to continue to play, so I took a job with the US Army as a civilian and as a civilian I got to lead teams of soldiers and former soldiers. That was for about seven or eight years. Half of that or so was with the Corps of Engineers. We were doing really, really cool work. I eventually decided to quit that job and we were out in Oregon at the time. We moved back to Ohio because that's where I'm from. My wife is from western Pennsylvania. We were having kids and we didn't have a lot of support, so we moved back to Ohio and I decided to start building a business in central Ohio.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
So I was building a real estate business. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to do real estate and so I got my license. I started getting involved with a property manager and a team here. Then I started flipping houses, then I started a house flipping franchise and ran that for a while and then sold that franchise and then I was the integrator for another real estate company and then I just hit timeout on everything. I was doing a bunch of different things. I was picking up some things along the way including EOS and this feeling, the feeling that felt really good, which was when I could help business owners help people take a big messy situation, something that felt like it was tangled up and it couldn't be untangled and start to unwind it and make some sense, help people get clear so they could start seeing the path. And I had already been using EOS in my businesses and when I learned that I could be an EOS implementer that I could take these tools to teams that were confused or stuck or frustrated and help them get unstuck and get more clear and start moving forward. It was obvious to me that that was what I was supposed to do. So that's what I've been doing for about a year and a half or so. I've just been helping other businesses use these really simple practical tools to help them move forward.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
How did you discover EOS in the first place when you started using it in some of these businesses you mentioned, how did you come across it and what was give us a before and after of life when you discovered EOS.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
It's like a lot of things where somebody back in your past hands you a book or recommends a book and you're like, yeah, cool, I'll definitely read that and you never do. And then I was operating this house flipping franchise and operation. I mean our tempo was we were doing a decent volume and things were getting kind of crazy. I was like, I'm not very good at this. And so I saw the book traction sitting on my shelf and I finally just pulled it off the shelf, cracked it open and started reading it and I was like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I need. And it didn't change overnight, but what did change over time was we started to get people in the right seat. We started to understand exactly what bodies of work actually existed in our business because until then it just felt like a rubber band ball of work.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
Everybody was doing everything and no one was actually accountable for anything. We started to get some really good structure organization and clarity over, oh, Ethan, you are accountable for this and I'm accountable for this. And if we know what each of us are accountable for, oh, now we can start things. Now we can start putting processes in place. Holy cow, it feels like we're kind of moving forward. Where do we want to go now let's get on the same page of where we're going and here we go, chug, chug, chug. That's really what it did for me over time,

Speaker 1 (09:10):
The picture you painted has certainly been my experience. I use Scaling Up, which is a other version of E-O-S-E-O-S is certainly the most popular and dominant one, and I know a number of guests and viewers and listeners on this show are relying on EOS for some of the benefits that you already discovered. So let's walk through. We're going to walk through just the very basics and let's start with just what is E-O-S-E-O-S

Speaker 3 (09:36):
Is just a way to get vision, traction and healthy. And so I'm writing on the board for people who are not watching. EOS stands for the Entrepreneurial Operating System, entrepreneurial Operating System. It's just a way to orchestrate and harmonize all the big moving parts of your business. It's a way to make sense of some of the chaos in your business, all for the aim of getting vision, traction and healthy. A vision is getting you and everybody that you're surrounded by on the same page with where you're going and how you plan to get there. If you are a team leader, an entrepreneur, somebody with a vision, you are going somewhere. You have this idea of what the future looks like. The breakdown often happens when no one else understands where you're going and wouldn't it be nice if they could help if they understood the end result, if they understood the destination and they could help you get there?

Speaker 3 (10:41):
That's the vision. That's what vision's about. We all want that traction is instilling real accountability and discipline in the business so that you see people executing towards that vision day in and day out. That sounds nice. Walking around your office on any given Tuesday and seeing people doing the right things, being accountable and disciplined towards where you guys are trying to go. And then healthy is being a team that is open and honest and cohesive and vulnerable with each other. This is how we create trust and enjoy being around each other on the path to wherever we're going. We start with the leadership team often and when I say we, I mean me as an implementer when I'm working with a client, so we work with the leadership team first. We get them squared away and then we start pushing this down into the organization because as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the organization. If your parents, you understand that as you and your spouse or partner go, that's the way the rest of the house goes. We got to get you in order first. But at the highest level, EOS is just a set of tools, simple tools, practical ideas and concepts that have been around for a hundred years. They'll be around a thousand more to help us get vision, traction, healthy as fast as we possibly can.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
Who is this for slash who isn't this for? You're serving a variety of different businesses with it. I mean literally any kind of business it seems like could benefit from this system. Who is it for? Who isn't it for?

Speaker 3 (12:14):
The tools are specifically designed for companies that have at least 10 employees. I've seen it work for companies that are smaller, it'll be a little bit stickier, more difficult. The smaller you are, it doesn't mean it won't work, but they're specifically designed for teams that have at least 10 people and more importantly, they're designed for teams that are entrepreneurial in nature, which means they have a mindset that is not afraid of disrupting the status quo. In fact, they're more afraid of the status quo than they are of change. So they're open and they're honest, they're maybe frustrated and they're willing to shake things up. That's who it works best for regardless of size, it does not work for people who want to maintain the way that you do things now and are resistant to change and growth.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
When you think about a real estate team in particular, they certainly fit a lot of them, fit those characteristics. How can this be especially helpful for a real estate team and let's say it is a 10 person team?

Speaker 3 (13:20):
Yeah, there's a couple of things coming to mind just from my experience with real estate and real estate teams. One is I will make the assumption, I know it's not everybody, but a lot of real estate teams are founded or started by really good salespeople, and when you are a really good salesperson, you do sales really well, you want to spend your time doing sales really well, and as you are recruiting agents and doing a bunch of transactions, what gets left in the dust is process and data and efficiency and good leadership and management, maybe all of the things that make your business sustainable to make it feel like it's a well-oiled machine to make it feel like you could scale this thing to any level and it's just going to crank all those things that keep you up at night that you know are not getting done, helping get those things squared away so that you can really focus with confidence on what you're good at, what's really going to move the needle for you, for your team members and for your clients.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
So that's the first thing that's coming to mind is just getting those things in order that I know a lot of people who start real estate teams are just not naturally gifted at, which is okay, we all have our natural giftings and that's where we should spend time, so let's figure out a way to really dial in the rest of it. The other way is really industry agnostic. Whether you're a real estate team or somebody who makes widgets, you want to surround yourself with people who have the same values as you. It's going to be, first of all, you got to know what your values are so that you can attract people to you and they'll stay working with you. People are just attracted to others that share similar values. So we want to attract people and repel everybody else. We're just going to go further with people that feel like they're all part of the same makeup.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
They share the same core values, your teammates and anybody else you attract to you, they want to know why. What is this all for? What are we doing here? They want to be part of something that's bigger than themselves and they want to understand their role in helping the greater good get to wherever it is that we're going and they want to feel like they're winning. And when you mix those components up, you have a formula for attracting people, attracting team members, attracting employees, attracting clients, and they want to stay. It's simple. It's not easy, but those components, those are what make for a really fulfilling and satisfying life for somebody when they wake up on Monday, they're excited to come be with you and they're excited to help you and the rest of the team get where they want to go.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Really good. It reminds me of, I don't know if these are original to Daniel Pink or not in his book drive, but he certainly popularized them. The idea that purpose, autonomy and mastery is all any of us really wants. And I hear all of those things in what you just shared there. I have an individual purpose and we have a collective purpose, and the organizations collective purpose is what drew me. It speaks to my personal purpose. When I'm in the right seat in an organization, I know what I'm supposed to do and we're in maybe a high pace entrepreneurial environment where things are changing and moving. I as a leader and I as a team member, autonomy is what we both need. I need autonomy as the team member to go do the thing that we agreed that I should be doing, and the team leader needs that.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
They can't hover over everybody all the time. And then certainly mastery as the organization grows and scales, we can probably put more people into more specialized roles that allow them to get truly expert or to get mastery in a particular zone, and you called it gifts. It's exploring that gift, flexing that gift, confirming it and going deeper and really unlocking the benefits of that gift that we have. And so I really appreciate that. I think it speaks to, as you already said, whether it's a real estate team or widgets, this has those benefits and I think too alignment when I think about this system, alignment is one of the key words and I think that comes back to this kind of high level vision and what we share together. One of the words that we can apply to the type of person that was the first part of your last answer, which was the person who starts a team is very often a super high performing real estate agent, a great salesperson, maybe not a great operator.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
They're maybe just really just running and gunning constantly. And so I think popular language around EOS, when I hear people talk about it, whether they use it or not, whether they really understand it or not, maybe someone recommended traction. They picked it up for a minute and looked at it. A lot of people understand the language of visionary and integrator, and very often this high performing salesperson is the visionary. It's their vision in fact, and their hustle, their grind, their commitment, whatever. That created this situation that's ready to continue growing, but it can never really truly scale from an operational efficiency perspective because everything is just wild.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
And

Speaker 1 (18:53):
So the integrator is the person that kind of grounds that just because it's very popular language that people can understand even if they don't understand EOS in full. Talk about the visionary and the integrator. How are they both equally important characteristics of the two types of people beyond the generic caricature I just drew and maybe even tips for a great working relationship between those folks.

Speaker 3 (19:19):
Yeah, that's good and I think it's really important to understand some fundamentals here on where these terms come from and specifically what they mean. So I'm going to draw again

Speaker 3 (19:32):
And what I'm drawing here is the first tool that any client learns in implementing EOS or anybody who's implementing S the first thing they learn. It's called the accountability chart, and it works on the fundamental belief that every organization has really and every leadership or every real estate team too. You have three primary functions. You have a marketing and sales function because you guys know that you got to get leads and turn those leads into sales, and once you have those sales, then you have to deliver on them. So you have an operations function and you have a finance and admin function because once you deliver on them sales, on those sales, you've got to track things, assets, monies, flowing in and out of the organization. Those functions, they just exist. Whether or not it feels like a rubber band ball or not right now inside of there, they're there.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
This tool gives us clarity on separating them. And then we also have an integrator function. An integrator is not a person, it's a function, and the integrator function in your business is the function that helps integrate or harmonize all of these other functions as they work towards a common goal. They drive accountability. They make sure that the ships are running on time, they're in the trenches and they're making sure that the business stays a well oiled machine as it's working towards its goals. The visionary couldn't be more different. The visionary stays at 30,000 feet. They have a lot of big ideas. They maintain the biggest and most strategic relationships for the company. They keep a pulse on the market, et cetera. They do not like to drive accountability or have crucial conversations. Most of the time they're kind of lousy at it. That's work best left to the integrator.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
So when we talk about terms like visionary and integrator, we're talking about very specific seats on the accountability chart that have very specific accountable roles. So if you are in the visionary seat for your company, your seat has a list of three to five accountable roles that says, as a visionary, this is what I'm accountable for. A lot of times it's the same stuff that I just mentioned, like 20 ideas, driving culture, embedding the vision, strategic relationships, pulse of the market, things like this 30,000 level stuff. The integrator seat is often accountable for very specific things like leadership, management, holding people accountable. They're accountable oftentimes for driving the p and l. When your p and l comes out at the end of the year, whether it's good or bad, this is the person who gets the credit or the price. They remove obstacles, they work on special projects, very specific roles, so that terminology is very specific.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
It comes with accountability and it got to be super clear. Now, you mentioned something where maybe this sales person, team leader is the visionary. They probably are because the one who started this thing, if that person is also in charge of their marketing and sales function, which at least out of the gate you probably are, it's very important to let's detangle one rubber band right now, and that is that you are sitting in two different seats with two very distinct and separate sets of accountable roles. Sometimes you are dealing with something with your marketing and sales hat on and sometimes you are dealing with a situation with your visionary hat on, and it's really important to distinguish those two because they require very different ways of being and very different activity. Sometimes that's the accountability chart and that's where that language comes from.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
I think a lot of the tension for an early stage team leader is that they don't recognize that these are two different roles and they are playing both of those roles and they maybe don't even know how to escape the role that they're not necessarily gifted in, which again, generally speaking tends to be the integrator role and those two other zones of activity. So for someone who has implemented EOS, I want to talk to those people first and then we'll kind of go into,

Speaker 1 (24:14):
Okay, I heard this episode, I'm going to pick up that copy attraction that I bought two years ago and never really did anything with, we'll talk to the getting started person in a minute, but let's just say, because I do know a number of folks are running on EOS, how okay is it to modify this? Some people will start it and they'll do it by the book maybe with an implement mentor and they might wind up modifying it or something for whatever reason. How fundamentalist should we be about the documents and the rhythms and the meetings as written?

Speaker 3 (24:54):
Good question. To me, there is a difference between customizing and modifying the systems should be, and the tools should be customized obviously to fit your very specific needs for your very specific team. An example of that is the accountability chart that we often do modify this or customize really this level of the accountability chart because maybe you have two different operations functions. Maybe you do real estate sales and you do property management for instance. Maybe that's two different, if it's not two different companies, maybe it's two different operations functions. Maybe it makes sense to separate marketing from your sales functions and maybe you say, okay, we do have a sales function for listing contracts and we also have a sales function for agent recruiting, so we're just customizing this accountability chart for what you are doing. Modifying sounds to me like, okay, we're not going to do this part of the EOS process, but we are going to add this random thing and we're going to start bolting on and making it janky.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
You can do that too. There's no traction or EOS police that are going to jump out of the bushes and nbb you, but here's the reality. This system has been designed over decades and has hundreds of thousands of case studies and it just freaking works. It is a race to get you vision, traction and healthy. It is a race to get you exactly what you want from your business, whatever that is, as fast as you possibly can get it, you can modify until your heart's content. I'm here to tell you that the more you modify, the slower you move. So as long as you're okay moving your dreams a year or two or three or four or five down the road, then please modify. But the truer you stay to the real process, the quicker you're going to get what you want.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
Really well done. And I like the way that you separated that language a little bit. Talk a little bit about from a diagnostic perspective, let's say someone's been running on it for a year and a half or two years. How do they know that it's running well and or how do they know when it isn't running as well as it could? What are a few signs? What should people look for to say, okay, we need to double back and make sure that we haven't modified too much, let's say, or we're not giving equal weight to all of the different pieces perhaps when you would have engaged with an organization that's been running it for some period of time, what's kind of like the diagnostic approach to help someone understand whether or not they're using it as effectively as they could?

Speaker 3 (27:54):
Yeah. I'll start at the high level, more simple and then we can get to the nitty gritty. The first question I just like to ask people is, are you getting what you want? Which at the end of the day, all this is, is a means to get what you want from your business and really your life because business is really just part of your life. It should contribute to your overall happiness. So are you getting what you want? And maybe a follow-up or tangential question to that is, or are you stuck? Are you at a ceiling? Because that's inevitable. There's no shame around that. If you are crushing it right now, there's a ceiling coming. If there's a ceiling that you're hitting right now, as long as you do the right things, you're going to be crushing it. Again, it is just part of life to hit a ceiling.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
So if you're at a ceiling, then we start to ask, well, why are you not getting what you want and why are you at a ceiling? And the answers to those questions just come from starting to think through these tools. Now at a more practical level, if you're using EOS and you haven't in a while and you want to know if you're getting everything you can out of the entire system, then go get the organizational checkup, which is a 20 question questionnaire that will tell you exactly how strong you are as an organization towards EOS mastery. We tell everybody what we're shooting for is a hundred percent strong in all six of the key components of the EOS model. Knowing that that is utopia, we'll not actually ever get there. This is a lifelong journey to just get better and better and better. We're really shooting for 80% strong or better, so go do the organizational checkup. It'll spit out a score for you and you can legitimately see where you have work to do and where you're doing really well.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Cool. Is that something I can drop a link to in the description below?

Speaker 3 (29:51):
Yeah, yeah. I mean even if you just Google EOS organizational checkup, it'll pop up immediately.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
I will do that work for you. If you're watching or listening, it'll be down below in the description, whether you're watching on YouTube, there's a see More, that link is right down below. If you're watching or listening@realestateteamos.com, I'll put that right down below. And of course, if you're listening to Apple Podcast or Spotify, there is a description for this episode, all the other episodes, and that link will be right down below. Cool. Really good tip there. We'll get into the six key components in just a minute, but I'd love to flip it back to that other side now, like someone who is feeling some of the pain that's been implied or inferred throughout this conversation so far, they're feeling stuck. They don't know why or they are in multiple seats because that's just where they are in their business right now, but they don't recognize it as such. And so that starts to feel like pain and frustration, these kinds of things. So for someone who is maybe ready to open the door to a different way of operating day in and day out for some of the benefits that we've talked about in this conversation, what are the first steps to getting going? Is it viable or how viable is it? Or who could actually do this part of it retraction and just start doing it? Is that a viable way to start?

Speaker 3 (31:13):
Yeah, it totally is. Yeah. We say in the US community, for every one company that is implementing with a professional implementer, there's probably nine or 10 who are out there doing it themselves at various degrees of success. But yeah, it's completely viable to go get traction, open it up, read it all the way through, and then turn to page 222 and go through the order of steps that are listed there in chapter 10. It is completely viable to do that. Now I know who I'm talking to, I'm talking to a certain personality who has maybe a very limited attention span and wants to move quick, maybe doesn't have the patience to sit down with a book like Traction because it is kind of a heavy more text booky read. So I get it, I get that. And my first piece of advice might be to maybe not read it all the way through, sorry, Gino, maybe just go to page 222, get the order to implement in which starts with the accountability chart and just go to the accountability chart chapter in the book and which will be just a few pages and start working through the drill as described in the book.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
You certainly can do that. Step number two would be call somebody. Look up EOS implementer in my area wherever you are. There's one. There are close to 900 across the world now, and we are help first. It's one of our core values. All we want to do is help. All we want to do is help you get more from your business. All we want to do is help you get more from your life. We are not going to put pressure on you. We're going to help you. We're going to give you tools, and we're going to sit down with you for 90 minutes for free and help shape some of these things and give you a sense of what your business could look like. Running on EOS, that's the shortcut. Go leverage somebody else who is really well versed in this and all they want is to help you get what you want.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
So the other four of the five core values of EOS implementers Harvey just mentioned, help first, humbly confident, grow or die. Do what we say and do the right thing. Do the right thing, by the way, as a core value that I operated under for a dozen years, and it is just never going to let you down. We all know what the right thing to do is

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Something that came to mind as you were talking about the personality type, maybe in the nature of the book itself. I mean essentially I would say if you were the kind of person who gets a new thing and it's a significant investment, it's going to be a significant improvement in your day-to-day life in some way, whether it's a tool or a program or a system or whatever it is, and you would never ever open up the operating manual, you just want to get out there and start using it, then you probably want an implementer because I have read traction to cover to cover, and it does read an operating manual just by the nature of what it is. It's like a step-by-step guide to what this thing is, how to do it with plenty of why it matters embedded throughout, but it's essentially an operating manual for this system, which is a significant investment and benefit to your business. And if you're not the kind of person who wants to read the manual and figure out the way to really get the value out of it, hire someone else to do it. Does that metaphor work for you?

Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yeah, I think it totally works. Yeah. I would say too at the pace that you want to move to, so if you want to be much further down the road,

Speaker 1 (34:55):
There we go. Yes.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
Yeah. Much further down the road two years from now than you would be, you just are going to be, I mean even the people who really do a good job self implementing, they move at, I don't know, half the speed that you would if you had an implementer.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
When I think about starting from scratch, I came into an organization that was already running on a system and I just got to learn the system by participating in the system. And then of course periodically we would reread the essentially operating manual as a group and make sure that we hadn't forgotten pieces or diverged too far. These kinds of things. We kind of come back to true. We true it up a little bit

Speaker 1 (35:33):
On those modifications. So when I think about an organization from scratch and I start to wonder, okay, what needs to be in place? The first and foremost thing that comes to mind for me is that there needs to be understanding and buy-in from at least the leadership team, whether that's two people or five people or 12 people, that this is important and that we're all going to do it together. But for you in a start from scratch scenario, what are the other building blocks that kind of need to be in place for this to start in the right way, besides the people in the group saying, yeah, this is important. We're all going to do this and we're going to do this wholeheartedly.

Speaker 3 (36:13):
That might essentially be it. And I would argue that you really don't need a hundred percent, and if you're going to wait for a hundred percent buy-in, you're going to be waiting for a very long time. What you need is some sense that you are at a ceiling, that you are frustrated that there is bigger and better things for you to be doing and achieving in the world and you want help. So I would say that first and foremost, it also can't hurt to have at least a baseline level of trust amongst your leadership team, which might be hard to measure from where you stand right now, but if you have what you feel like is at least a baseline baseline of trust, as in you can talk about some pretty tough topics and everybody's okay at the end of the day, that helps because it can get hairy pretty quick.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
If you have an established team, it can get pretty intense pretty quick because you're shaking things up. You're asking the question, okay, if this is one of the first things we do is the accountability chart, if this is the structure that we need and these are the seats and these are the accountable roles, are we sure that Ethan is the right person in the right seat? That can be a touchy subject if we don't have a baseline of trust. And so I'll add a third thing that just came to my mind as we were talking about that, a real interest in the long-term, greater good of the company. So that conversation about is Ethan really the best guy for that seat that if we're not all thinking about, well, what's good for the company, all that matters is what's good for this company that we are stewards to. If we're thinking just about our own egos and our own careers, that conversation goes a lot different than if we're thinking about the greater good.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Yeah. This raises something that we already kind of touched on. One of the big challenges for a lot of people at least getting their minds around all of this is you might actually be in multiple seats at once, and that might be appropriate and necessary for this phase of the company until we can afford essentially to put someone else in that seat and someone else in that seat so that you're not in three seats, you're in one. And I think a lot of team leaders who've gone through a growth phase will recognize that they use have to do all of this, and then they had the privilege or opportunity to take some hats off and they chose to take these hats. That's language we often use. And so it's very often just like what seats do you not want to have to take responsibility for anymore because you found the right person for it.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
I think the other one that's directly related that you just alluded to is it's really difficult for people to have these conversations and to really separate the person from the seat. A lot of people are like, oh, well, we think about operations, we think about Mary Lou. Mary Lou runs operations. She's the person. It's like, that's not what we're doing here. Talk a little bit about that dynamic and maybe how you've coached people into separating the person who has that seat now so that you can actually have that conversation of, now that we all agree that what this seat is, is Ethan the right person for it, or is Mary Lou and my made up scenario the right person for it?

Speaker 3 (39:43):
Yeah, I love that man. And that that's where the rubber meets the road here in real change. And my mentors, Gino, the guy who wrote Gino Wickman, the guy who wrote Traction, what they always say is the answer is in the tools. So as long as you're using the tools, then we are going to get to where we want to go. And in this instance, what we're trying to go is making sure we have all the right people in the right seats. When we do the accountability chart exercise, we do it structure first, people second. So some of the coaching cues that I give or facilitation cues that I give when I'm in a room with somebody, and you can use these too, if you're just in a room with your leadership team, is you all are fired. You're all fired. You are not the ops guy, you're not the sales guy, you're not the visionary, you're not the owner, you're not anything.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
You are a person of equal responsibility as everyone else around this table who is just charged with doing the very best next thing for this company, and that's it. So let's design the structure through this lens. What functions do we have and what are the accountable roles of those functions? Now that we have that, now let's start to try and fill some of these. So does anybody from the people that you know, which maybe in this room or maybe yourself, who do you know that you think could really do a great job at the roles that are inside the marketing and sales seat? And then we go through a very prescribed framework on figuring out if we have somebody or not that will fit that. And we know we're constantly reminding them because it's very hard and it's human nature. Just to go back to the way that things are, go back to the way that you think about your company.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
Go back to thinking, well, Mary Lou, she's in and what she does is this and this, and Uhuh, whoa, whoa, time out, time out. Mary Lou is fired for now, let's not think about Mary Lou. Think about operations in your company, on your team. What does the operations function really need to do really well? Oh, yeah, you're right. Okay. Okay. So we're going through this drill of deciding whether or not we have somebody who can really do a good job at this seat. The reality is that we might not, and that's okay. So maybe we put Mary Lou in there for now. I'll just call her ML for now, and she's going to own that seat for the time being, because we need somebody to own that function. Operations is far too important to just leave unmanned. So we put her in there and then guess what?

Speaker 3 (42:21):
We just put a circle around it. We create an issues list. And Mary Lou, as the ops lead is just an issue. Now we have complete clarity. Mary Lou is going to own it. We all agree, including Mary Lou, that given what we've set up as the structure, she can't really sustain that. She can't take on that level of accountability. She's going to sit in that seat for now. God bless you, Mary Lou, but it's on the issues list. And all that means is that every quarter we're going to ask ourselves, is this the right quarter for us to address this, to move the needle and get a right person, right seat in the operation seat or is it not? And if you have an implementer, then they make you into that question so that you can't ignore it.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
So you've touched on now most of the six key components. That one was issues, the issues list, the IDS approach of identify, discuss, and solve.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
We've talked a little bit about people, the right people in the right seats, and the difficulty of separating who's in the organization now from what the seat should be responsible for. You've used the language of traction, which I think other language that's popular around this that I think people would recognize. People talk about their quarterly rocks and these types of things, but it really is that whole meeting. Pulse, vision, data, and process are the other three. We haven't talked a lot about those. Talk a little bit about process. I mean, we want to document process. How detailed is too detailed share. Actually, I won't even guide you with just a couple of minutes. Share anything you want about vision, data, or process

Speaker 3 (43:58):
In a couple of minutes. I can probably hit 'em all. So let's just go in order. Vision is getting you on the same page with your leadership team and eventually everybody else who is on your team on the same page with where you're going and how you plan to get there. The data component is about actually operating your business on facts and figures on objective information instead of the thoughts, or I'm sorry, the feelings and the ego and the subjective information that we often use to make decisions in an entrepreneurial company. And the process component is about getting the most important work in your business, done the right and best way every single time. We like to throw around terms like scalability, profitability, this is what the process component drives. It makes the business easier to manage and ultimately makes it more fun because we can drive repeatability from the process component.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
And you are right on the process component. We are not building 700 page SOPs because it does not benefit us in an entrepreneurial company to spend the extra time documenting every single little step in a process. We just identify that we have a handful of processes that are truly core to our business. We identify them and then we document them using the entrepreneurial approach. We document just the 20% of the steps that get us 80% of the yield, get us 80% of the bang for our buck. Now we're talking about 5, 4, 3, 2 page documents that hit the highlights of how we do this in our company, and boom, we have our process documented and now we can start driving repeatability.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
I think that 80% is the thing. I mean, you could just keep going. You get to 50 pages by addressing every single corner case that you may not encounter again for like 18 months, and it's just not that useful. Actually, we haven't talked a lot about the meeting cadence. I'd love a minute on that. When an organization is in rhythm operating according to EOS, just give the highlights of what that rhythm looks like from a meeting perspective.

Speaker 3 (46:10):
Yeah, I like to use this analogy to talk about the meeting pulse. So somebody a lot smarter than me said that really as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we're on a journey from point A to point B, and what point B is, that's our vision that goes on our VTO or vision traction organizer, which is another EOS tool. It just describes the point B, our destination, where we're going, we cannot get there alone, so we need people. So the people component tells us who we need and what they're going to be accountable for. And the rocks just described for all the people who are on this journey with us from point A to point B, what part of that journey they're accountable for. And it is a fact that you have to both build the business of tomorrow and maintain the business of today. You cannot choose one or the other.

Speaker 3 (47:05):
You have to do both or you will fail. Rocks are the things that describe what we're doing to build the business of tomorrow. Your scorecard and your list of measurables are the things you got to keep on track to keep the business moving, keep the business of today moving on the journey. And because this entire journey involves people and people are terribly, terribly flawed, we have the meeting pulse and the meeting pulse keeps us accountable and keeps us moving in the right direction. Now, the meeting pulse is actually three different meetings, which happen at different cadences throughout the year, but the one that people use the most and become the most familiar with out of the gate is the L 10 or level 10 meeting agenda, which is a weekly meeting for the leadership team most of the time for about 90 minutes. And you're checking in with all the most important things in your business and you're solving issues.

Speaker 3 (48:06):
So it looks like this. Are our rocks on track? Are our scorecard measurables on track? And if not, they need to go to the issues list. How are our employees and customers or clients doing? Now let's solve some issues. What's standing in the way from us getting to where we want to go? Let's prioritize them. So we're making the best use of our time together today, and let's start solving them at their root so that we can move them out of the way and keep moving forward. That's every single week. It always starts on time. It always ends on time. It always has the same agenda, and it becomes a pulse, a literal pulse, and it's the glue that keeps everything together. Without the L 10 agenda, none of this other stuff really matters.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
Harvey, this has been awesome. I appreciate you spending this time with me and with all of us. If someone has gotten here, I would love for you to share where they can connect and learn more about you and or other places you would send people who've been engaged by these ideas and want to take a next step.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
Of course, you can go to YouTube, look up anything about EOS. That's, I mean, YouTube is chock full of information on EOS. We have a huge library of books, not just traction, but other books that break down certain components or tell the story of EOS implementation and story format, all kinds of books out there. And if you want to get in touch with the local implementer, somebody in your backyard just to pick their brain, have 'em sit down with you, you can just Google EOS implementer in my city, whatever that is. If you want to talk to me specifically, I'm in Columbus, Ohio. I don't travel, but I love talking to people and I love explaining these tools, and I love helping people. So you can find me anywhere, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. My email is harvey dot juergen YR gs worldwide.com.

Speaker 1 (50:08):
All that information is right down below. Reach out to Harvey. He's obviously a wealth of knowledge. Harvey, thank you so much for doing this, and I hope you have a great afternoon.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
Thank you, Ethan. Fun.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. For email exclusive insights every week, sign up@realestateteamos.com.