Our leadership team spent a full day reviewing Q2 and planning Q3 the EOS way. Emma Carter explains how the day ran, from check-ins and the VTO to solving issues and setting our Rocks for the next 90 days.
On Tuesday 6 October our leadership team stepped out of the day job for our quarterly planning session. We run Inflection Point on EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, a framework created by Gino Wickman and set out in his book Traction. Every 90 days, EOS asks a leadership team to spend one full day reviewing the previous quarter, revisiting its plan, setting new priorities and working through its biggest issues. This session fell halfway through our year, so we looked back on Q2 and planned Q3.
Starting with each other
We began with personal and professional check-ins, so everyone in the room knew what was happening across the business and in each other's lives before we started making decisions. As I wrote after our employee engagement survey, we put a lot of weight on open, honest conversations without judgement, and that starts with the leadership team.
Checking the plan still holds
Next we reviewed our Vision/Traction Organiser, or VTO. It answers eight questions about the business, covering our core values, our long-term target, our one-year plan and the issues in front of us, among others. Reading it together each quarter tells us whether the decisions we've made since the last session still point the same way.
Then we looked back at Q2. We celebrated what went well and were honest about where we fell short. Each of us rated the quarter, and those scores led to a frank discussion about what had worked and what hadn't.
The five things great leaders do
We revisited the EOS tools and disciplines that give us accountability, alignment and clarity, and spent time on the five leadership practices that EOS sets out as what great leaders do: give clear direction, provide the necessary tools, let go, act with the greater good in mind, and take Clarity Breaks. A Clarity Break is regular time set aside to step back and think about the business instead of working in it. We believe all five are critical to our continued growth and success.
Most of the day went on issues
The biggest share of the day went on our issues list. EOS uses a method called IDS, short for Identify, Discuss, Solve, which means agreeing on the real cause of a problem before anyone proposes a fix. We worked through our biggest issues and opportunities this way, and the debate was healthy. People challenged each other, disagreed openly and brought different perspectives to the table.
Rocks for the next 90 days
We then turned our priorities and opportunities into a focused set of Rocks. In EOS, Rocks are the three to seven most important things a business must complete in the next 90 days. We finished by reinforcing accountability and ownership across the leadership team, so each of us knows exactly what we've committed to.
I can't share the detail yet, but the Rocks we've set for this quarter will be game-changing for the company when we complete them, and I'm looking forward to telling you about them.
New voices around the table
This was the first quarterly planning session for our expanded Senior Leadership Team. Ian Freyne, our Senior Technical Accounts Manager, and Rory Coleman-Smith, our Marketing Manager, joined us and brought fresh perspectives and ideas to the discussion. Iain wrote about why we chose to run on EOS back in 2024, when the group planning each quarter was smaller.
Thank you, Robin
The day was facilitated by Robin Winnett, a Professional EOS Implementer. Robin challenged our thinking, kept us focused when a conversation started to drift and made sure we left with clear outcomes and commitments. An outside facilitator can ask questions that are difficult to put to your own colleagues, and Robin asked plenty of them.
Why we plan this way
Our clients never sit in these sessions, but they deal with the result: a leadership team that agrees on where the business is going and knows who's responsible for each part of getting there. If you're planning your own next quarter and want IT that supports those plans, talk to us about managed IT services.
Emma Carter
Operations Director & EOS Integrator
