Mike Paton - Process!: How Discipline and Consistency Will Set You and Your Business Free

Contents

THE TRACTION LIBRARY

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Process! copyright 2022 by Mike Paton and Lisa Gonzlez

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First E-Book Edition: 2022

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022013467

ISBN 9781637741368 (hardcover)

ISBN 9781637741375 (electronic)

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To Kate, whose very existence reminds me whats possible.

Paton

To Paddy, Donny, Alex, and Skyler, I love you more than the most.

Lisa

If you are a reader who is not familiar with the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), Traction, or the EOS Tools, dont worry. Weve written this book so that it will bring real value to you and your business, regardless of your level of EOS understanding. If you want to learn more about EOS and the EOS Tools, we encourage you to read Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, and the other books in the Traction Library. At no cost, you can also download many of the EOS Tools mentioned in this book at eosworldwide.com/eos-tools.

CONTENTS

Are you controlling your business, or is your business controlling you? Sadly, most entrepreneurial leaders are being controlled by their businesses, and it doesnt have to be that way. You deserve to be free.

I obsess about freedom, for myself and for others who have the courage, the drive, and the work ethic to build something great andat the same timebe truly free.

Ive spent my entire adult life trying to prove its possible. It started with intensive study, a relentless drive to understand the art and science of running a truly great business. I then applied what I was learning in my own family business and shared the stuff that worked best with other entrepreneurs in my network. Through painstaking trial and error, I gradually discovered six keys to running a great business and worked hard to discover the simplest and best way to strengthen those six key components in an entrepreneurial business. Out of this obsession came EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System). Today, EOS has a global following that includes more than five hundred EOS Implementers helping tens of thousands of companies around the world run on EOS. Its been a labor of love, borne of my desire to be free and to help others achieve that freedom as well.

There were some surprising discoveries along the way, and one of them is explored deeply by my friends and colleagues Mike Paton and Lisa Gonzlez in this important book. Its the magical and inescapable connection between consistent, disciplined execution and the freedom most of us truly seek in our businesses. Virginia Woolf said it best when she declared, To enjoy freedom, we have to control ourselves. To many successful leaders, that seems counterintuitive. But as Ive discovered, and as the hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs weve helped have proven, its absolutely true.

Another important discovery influenced my thinking about EOS in the early days, and its beautifully articulated in Process! Very simply, running an entrepreneurial company is way different than being an executive in a big corporation. If you own or run a small, rapidly growing business, you likely have an almost-full-time job in the trenches. One minute you may find yourself talking with a customer; the next, youre fixing a machine on the shop floor. Next, youre meeting with your banker, spending a few minutes picking up cigarette butts outside the loading dock, and then interviewing a new machine operator. Somewhere in there, youve got to find time to think, solve problems, lead and manage people, etc. It may be interesting, but it can be exhausting.

In contrast, successful leaders spend nearly all their time thinking strategically, building important relationships, making important decisions, and leading others. In short, rather than working in the business, they spend time working on the business and, ultimately, bring greater value to the company. Though it may seem obvious today, at the time I was developing EOS it was almost revolutionary to believe that the tools we needed as entrepreneurial leaders should be different, too.

Building on this important discovery, Process! carefully lays out an approach for consistent and disciplined execution that can be led by the busy people who run entrepreneurial companies. Its simple, high level, and practicalno theory, no wasted time or energy. Because its simple and effective, itll be more readily understood and adopted by people at every level of your organization. In other words, itll take less time and make more of an impact than you might expect. Notably, itll also work really well in a large corporation that wants to get a bigger bang for its buck than more complex business process improvement initiatives can deliver.

In a nutshell, this book is all about developing the ability to see your business through the lens of the core processes that comprise your business, and then making sure every core process is right and followed by everyone in your organization with absolute consistency. As a result, youll create peace of mind, more consistency, scalability, ease of management, and more profit. In addition, youll greatly increase the value of your company.

As Paton and Lisa mention in this book, five of my clients have sold to large billion-dollar companies at very high multiples. In each of these cases, the acquiring company described them as one of the best-run companies weve ever considered acquiring. This was largely due to my clients applying every word contained in this book.

Thats the kind of impact reading this book and implementing what it teaches could have on your business (and, more importantly, your life). So please, read on, and put the principles Paton and Lisa share to work for you. Ive spent my whole business life wanting to have a huge, positive impact on the world and, at the same time, be truly free. If thats what you want, too, Process! can make it happen.

Gino Wickman, Founder, EOS Worldwide