Gino Wickman’s EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System – first popularised in books like “Traction” and “Get a Grip”, later promoted by a cottage industry of EOS consultants) is a powerful framework for creating discipline in your business.
It’s not without it’s critiques. And it’s far from perfect for every situation. But it provides some useful tools for anyone looking to streamline, systemise, and reduce the overall level of chaos they experience on a day-to-day basis.
One such tool is the concept of “The Bar”.
Without dredging through the detail, “The Bar” is essentially the cultural standard you enforce in your organisation: a specific mix of characteristics and discrete competencies you expect your team to meet.
The elements of this mix are completely dependent on the business in question. Table-stakes qualities like professionalism, work ethic, and trustworthiness don’t feature: they’re given, so they’re not used to filter good from bad.
When we eliminate the obvious, what were left with – after much deliberation – are the unique values we build our team around.
Enter the concept of “The Bar”: a heuristic-driven paradigm we use to rank employees and pick out strong performers (wherever they are).
It’s simple in practice:
For a given quality, every single person in your organisation is either above The Bar or below it.
People can be above in all aspects except one, above and below in equal measure, or entirely below your standards (if you’re unlucky).
The purpose of this exercise is clarity. Because when you know who’s falling short & why, you’re better able to have an honest conversation with them… One that can facilitate change, if they’re open to it.
If you’re struggling personally, or managing a team where some of your individual contributors aren’t quite hitting their targets, then this kind of model can help.
But simply knowing that you’re not living up to some defined standard isn’t enough.
If you don’t care about improving your performance, you don’t think you can reach your goals, or you don’t acknowledge the standard as valid in the first place, nothing will change.
Standards are only valuable when they’re:
- Transparent
- Impartial
- Meaningful
Miss out on any of these, and your chances of creating positive change are slim-to-none.
Use the tools you have available to you.
Find objective ways to measure performance.
Support the people around you in raising their level & developing professionally.
But don’t forget that you need more than a checklist and a spreadsheet to lead a team.
It’s a poor craftsman who abandons their art for the sake of using one tool above all others.