Balloons and Business Leadership

Take a look at the northern Phoenix sky on an early morning. You might see hot air balloons taking off. Clusters of balloons with baskets full of eager people suspended underneath.

I recently took a ride in one of those balloons. Kudos to Hot Air Expeditions for offering an exciting early-morning experience along with some helpful business lessons.

Celebrating Business with BizDayGlobal

BizDayGlobal is the video podcast that celebrates business. The core belief of BizDayGlobal: When people do business with each other for mutual advantage, they are less likely to fight each other.

What is Business?

From the BizDayGlobal 44-second intro:

• Business is cooperation.
• Business inspires all of us to work together, and to win together.
• Business lets us manufacture in Singapore and ship to Barbados through locks engineered in Panama, financed in Switzerland.

The Traction Component + EOS

The back cover of Gino Wickman’s book Traction poses a powerful question:

The entrepreneur’s vision gives birth to a business. Traction makes the vision real. Earlier in this series, we covered five components that are necessary to get the business moving in the right direction: Vision, People, Data, Issues, and Process. This article summarizes the sixth component, Traction.

Traction enables the entrepreneur to gain a grip on the business. Traction is so important that Wickman’s entire book was named for this single component of EOS.

Process + EOS: The Bridgetown Way

Consistency is one of the most effective tools we can use to keep customers coming back for more. When first-time customers become repeat customers, revenue explodes (in a positive way). Customers trust brands like Starbucks, Apple, and Google because expectations and delivery are consistently aligned.

How does a company achieve consistency? Through processes.

The Process Component

This article is part of a series on Traction and the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). EOS is a set of tools that enables a business leader to grow a company while maintaining sanity. Today’s EOS component: Process.

Issues + EOS

From The Issues Component chapter of the book Traction:

Problems are like mushrooms. When it’s dark and rainy, they multiply. Under bright light, they diminish. In an organization where there is nowhere to hide, the problems are easily illuminated. EOS will create that strong light.

Time to shine the light, find the issues, and solve them.