Culture Focused Practice

Hey. Hey, Dr. Tara Vossenkemper here, and you are listening to the Culture Focused Practice podcast. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for being here.

I definitely think that EOS has a specific reputation. Reputation. I'm from Missouri. If you can't tell.

I think that people either love it or they basically write it off. They think, well, everyone's talking about it, so. It. It's just a bandwagon thing. It's a fad, it's a passing trend. It's too corporate. It's too rigid. It's so complicated. I don't agree with any of that. From my perspective, most of the resistance I hear and like the sort of the pushback, it's really based on misunderstandings about EOS.

So, what I wanna do this episode is break down some of the top misconceptions that group practice owners have about EOS, and I think it goes without saying why those misconceptions then cost you clarity, sanity, and traction, not to be cheesy and use that language.

Before we go further, please make sure you subscribe, like, or follow the podcast. If this resonates with you and you do those things, you basically just help other people find this that it's gonna resonate for, which is really incredible.

That said, let's get to the agenda for the day. We are going to, like I said, cover a few myths.

So one is that e os is just for big companies. That's number one. Two, we already do that. I love this one. Three, it's too rigid slash robotic. Four, we're gonna get into what EOS requires, and then fifth and final, we're just gonna have a couple of key takeaways.

So. I hear this bullshit frequently. Well, we kind of do EOS already. Uh, yeah. We're basically doing those things. We're basically doing that, you know, that's really intense. It's too complicated for my team. It's too intense for my team. It's too much to start. It's too much to take on.

I mean, honestly, I, that's all fine. Like especially the, you know, we already kind of do that. We're doing that already. That's not implementing EOS and so that's fine. I. If you don't actually care if it works or not. So if you are not implementing it in the way that it's intended and you're not sort of living it out with the spirit of EOS, it's probably not gonna work as well for you compared to somebody who's attempting to embody and is really digging into the structure and trying to make this system work for them.

I don't even like that language actually. It's not about trying to make the system work for them. It's instilling and implementing a structure that allows for the practice to work for you. That's really what it's about. So let's just bust through the myth. So I wanna talk about each of these one by one.

Myth number one, EOS is just for big companies. No, the fuck it's not. It's absolutely not just for big companies. You could read that directly from the book Traction if you wanted to. There's a limit on the size. I think he says, up to about, up to a 250 employee company, which maybe you could even evolve it from there if you wanted to, but you could make it work for a three person company. Like it doesn't need to be this big, gigantic thing. It is not just for big companies.

I would argue that structure even matters more when you're small because there are so many things that are reliant on so few people. When you don't have structure, you end up running around like a flock of chickens. You stop and you like balk balk and then you take off. That's exhausting. You're literally gonna run yourself ragged. That's what's gonna happen is you're gonna be exhausted and shit's not gonna get done 'cause you just keep running from place to place to place to place to place.

You know, and maybe it's not as exhausting if you have like a three person team, for example, but if you start to get up to even like six to seven employees, I'll say clinicians in particular, but employees or like 10, oh God. Or like 15 or 20, I mean, that's a special version of leadership purgatory.

That is a very difficult, logistical weighty place to be. There's too many things that need to get done and not enough of you. Or if it's just you or if it's just you and like one other person, there's not enough of you to go around. So if you don't have structure, systems, the right people in the right seats, clarity on what the seats even are or the responsibilities associated with them.

If you don't have a vision, if you don't have rocks, if you don't have all the things that EOS offers and you're not actively trying to implement this thing, it will feel chaotic and unclear and like I said, a special form of purgatory.

Myth number two, we already do that. We do something like that. We kind of do that. I. No, you don't. I, I can't Even if you're telling me, well, we already do that. You know, we read the book one time and we implemented L10 meeting, so we're basically doing EOS.

That makes me almost choke up on the inside a little. Like my body kinda seizes up, you know? Like that is just not what it's about. Lip service to something saying we do something. Is not equivalent to actual implementation or actual integration. These things are very different.

So if you are saying that you do EOS, but you can't explain to me how it's implemented or how it's integrated, or the ways in which all of the moves that you make are connected to something broader than literally just the move in a vacuum, that's not EOS.

This is probably a little bit of a soapbox or tangent, but one of the things that I love about EOS is the ability to kind of build out a whole spiderweb, you're, you're literally building out a structural ecosystem for your practice. And so anytime something comes up, it might live in one place, but it has an impact and a ripple effect on a lot of other moving pieces around it.

If I don't hear from somebody the way in which things are related, it's really hard for me to believe that they're implementing EOS in an accurate way. So when somebody says, well, we already do that, and then it sort of like stops there or they say one sentence and then it falls flat and they can't really elaborate more. I don't think that that's the case, then. I don't actually think that they're already doing that thing.

A lot of people are using some of the language, like they're borrowing the language or they're using it, or they know one of the concepts and they're doing it. So they're basically doing EOS. That's not what it's about.

Maybe I'm a purist in this way where I think that you should be really trying to embody something that you're seeking to do i in order to effectively assess if it's working for you.

So if I say, well, I wanna build, you know, I wanna gain 10 pounds of muscle, and I like write a program for myself, a workout program, and I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna do this many sets and reps and I'm gonna do this weight and I'm gonna do this workout and then I do it once a week.

That's not, I'm not serious. Like I'm not actually. Trying to gain 10 pounds of muscle then. 'cause if I was, I would be much more intentional with the timing of the workouts, the consistency, probably my food intake, what I'm eating, and how I'm fueling my body in order to achieve this goal. If I just have it all planned out and then I don't do the workouts consistently, or again, I'm doing them once a week, nobody would say, I'm actively trying this.

So for me it feels like the equivalent with EOS where if you can tell me one thing about EOS and then you are also saying that you do that one thing, so you basically operate from an EOS perspective. My pushback is that's not the same thing. These are not the same thing.

Modifications once you're doing it is a separate story. So we're not talking about that. We're not talking about intentional nuance and adjustments to implementing EOS once it's running. We are talking about people saying they're doing it without actually fully implementing it.

Myth number three. It's too rigid or robotic. I take a lot of umbrage with this one actually. I think that to have a structure allows you to expand and create and derive meaning, and create meaning, and get clarity on your vision.

Your vision is literally as big as you want it to be. The reason that you have something like EOS is so you can achieve your vision. So if you say, well, it's too rigid, my pushback would be, I don't know if you are understanding it in the right way, then. You could go from a two person team to a 200 person team in a matter of 10 years, if that was your goal.

You could do any number of things that you wanted to as long as the things that you're doing are through the lens of your core focus and then the direction of your vision.

So EOS doesn't dictate what your core focus is or what your vision is. You get to decide all of those things. E OS is giving you the ability to make decisions in that process and to live out in such a way that the entire experience is likely to be achieved and also healthily managed. That's what it does.

It's not about rigidity, it's not the soul of what you're doing. It's just, it's just the skeleton. It allows your, your arm to move without, you know, skin flopping everywhere.

And it flexes to your culture. You are not allowing something like EOS or another person to dictate what your values are or what your culture is. You are implementing systems and structure in such a way that you can actively manage and curate and enhance the culture that you want. That's what it's about.

Along those lines in particular, I often find that people get overwhelmed by, well, how do I create this culture? Well, how do I do this thing with culture? And I think, have you embedded it into any systems that you have? Have you put it on your issues list for your L 10 meetings? Have you set it as a measurable on your five year 10 year or 20 year target? Like what are the ways in which you're paying attention to this thing?

Even something like EOS allows me to put it in multiple places and pay attention to it because it's an important part. And then I can bake it into what we're doing on a consistent basis rather than, it's rigid, I don't wanna do it and now my culture feels like it's a shattered fish tank. It's just fucking everywhere. And I don't know how to piece it back together. And the fish is flopping around, you know, running outta oxygen 'cause it can't breathe air. And so it's a mess.

So I think the final piece related to that, it's too rigid. It's too robotic, is that implementing EOS only provides more autonomy. That's the craziest, probably feels counterintuitive thing in all of this. It's like, well, but we're putting a system in place. Isn't that gonna make us feel more confined?

No, it's the opposite. It alleviates the fuzziness around what you're doing. It provides a container for things to exist in, which provides clarity and also enhances autonomy within the system, so people end up feeling safely contained rather than like they could go anywhere that they want to, which ends up being very overwhelming for folks.

So you actually gain leverage by doing something like this. You don't lose it.

Okay, so what EOS actually requires then is. Consistency, and I don't mean you need to spend 10 hours every single week, that's not what it is. It means consistency, like filling out your scorecard, getting your to-do list items done that are related to issues from the previous week's meeting, focusing on your quarterly rock, meeting for L 10 meetings every single week on a consistent basis in rhythm, doing reviews, doing quarterly conversations.

It is about just doing some things consistently. Again, not things that are gonna take up 20 hours of your week, but intentional pieces of this on a weekly basis, on a consistent basis, which really is what is going to start getting you traction. That's a huge piece.

A second thing that EOS actually requires is feedback. You know, I love feedback. If you don't, I'm telling you now, I really love feedback a lot. Feedback comes in all forms. It's gonna come, of course, in a data type form with the scorecards and metrics and things like that.

But also you can bake in feedback as part of an ongoing communication style. You know, in my monthly check-in emails, for example, I might have a call for feedback. We have feedback on our intra-office website. I ask people, what do you think about this? Here's something we're thinking about doing. What feedback do you have? What pushback do you have? What's coming up for you? What's the resistance? Et cetera.

Yeah, doing EOS does require you to be tuned in with feedback, not necessarily the soliciting feedback in the way that I do, but especially the scorecard piece. And then also some of the quarterly conversations, like the reviews that they suggest you do.

So, and then the third thing that EOS actually requires, or really requires is basically you have to let go of, well, this is how we've always done it. Well, this is what we've always done, so we just need to continue doing this. No, you don't. Why? Why do you need to continue doing anything you've always done? Like you can change. What's the matter with evolving?

That's what it's about, is taking stock of what is implementing a system to clarify things and then deciding from there what's working and what's not based on data and information and input from your leadership team, not based on what, we've always done it this way, so we're gonna leave it.

That just writes off possibilities. That's really what it's doing is saying like, no, no, we've always done this. You're saying no to a thousand other things that could take place, and maybe 1% of those thousand things is actually better than what you're currently doing. Maybe really like 5%, but you know, who knows?

I think ultimately with EOS, this is not a plug and play type thing. It's not a color by numbers type thing. It's a dig and commit. Like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna help you implement the structure. We're gonna look at the skeleton of things and I where do we want meat on the bones? Where do we wanna build out muscle? How do we wanna make this look in a matter of, again, 1, 3, 5, 10 years, et cetera?

That is the beauty in it, is that there's so much more freedom in the structure. The structure allows for freedom. It's not the opposite. It's not that the structure creates rigidity and inflexibility, it's that it allows for you to really take up space in a way that works for you and your team.

You definitely do not have to marry EOS. This is my final thought. You don't have to marry it. You don't have to be wedded to it.

Again, once you implement, if something isn't working, you can modify. That's the beauty, like you literally assess what's working, you make decisions and you go from there, and then you assess some more.

My ask is that you seek to understand it thoroughly before you dismiss it, and then maybe a second ask is if you are saying you implement, it's to try to do it thoroughly. Don't do it half-assed. It's not gonna be as effective. Do it thoroughly to actually get the most out of it. That's my ask for you.

If you are interested in EO S, I have a mastermind going live super soon.

Go to www.taravossenkemper.com/eos-mastermind. It is going live, I think, literally in like a day. So if you're listening to this, you need to get on at ASAP.

If you have missed the deadline for that, join the EOS wait list, which is gonna be at the same link for the record, and that'll just keep you in the top spot for first access for the Fall Mastermind.

I have two Masterminds per year. They're six month masterminds, one in the spring, one in the fall, so.

Boom, baby. That's it. I really, really want you to feel good about doing something like EOS in your practice. I want you to feel confident in what you're doing. I want you to feel. I don't know, like you could take this and run with it and then you could thoroughly implement it and feel the positive impact from it.

My goal is that you make an eyes wide open decision about this, and again, if you are implementing, that you do it thoroughly and with a lot of intentionality. So god speed. Good luck. Thanks for being here. I'll see you next time. Bye.