Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business Paperback – April 3, 2012

I've recently started my own business, and I have so many questions to answer each day. So far, this book has been very helpful in simplifying my vision and goals for my company. This book seems to be targeted at million-dollar businesses, but it is also useful for start-ups and businesses that need help getting off the ground. Wickman truly embodies the KISS method, and this can be seen in the writing as well. Overall, a great book for businesses of any kind.

Great book for business!

Before reading, I didn’t really understand why this book is called “Traction.”Traction is the grip that tires have on a road or other surface. I know it also says “get a grip on your business,” so it almost makes sense — but the act of “getting a grip” usually involves imagery related to hands, not tires.It didn’t take long before I started to understand: It’s called “Traction” because it’s going to help us stop spinning our wheels as an organization and get somewhere.This book was recommended to me by multiple people separately as I discussed struggles as a manager where my team always had our ducks in a row, but then would get bottlenecked and held back whenever we needed another team’s help with a project. There was a lot of “hurry up and wait” going on, where my team would finish our parts of a project and then get stuck waiting for others who viewed their own projects as higher priority.The real problem was disorganization and a lack of communication from the top down. Everyone had a different idea of what the companies top priorities are or should be.Then the CEO read this book and started making changes based on it. Many of the changes aggravated or upset me, from pulling the executive team aside for a full week to rewrite our core values while I was trying to get the ball rolling on 4th quarter marketing plans to firing people who I didn’t think deserved to be fired.Then I read this book and I now understand what’s happening, including the firings. Did they “deserve” to get fired? In most cases, no. But they were all cases where someone was either not quite the right person for the job or we didn’t really have a need for their skill set and it was a waste to keep them on payroll for sentimental reasons.Now I feel I should clarify this is NOT a book about firing people lol that’s just an example of how I witnessed my employer implementing some of the concepts in the book.No, Traction is a book about getting your organization organized, getting everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) on the same page and focused on the correct priorities, and fostering healthy communication between teams… And this description barely scratches the surface.Most “business books” I’ve read are full of fluff and often not even good fluff. Traction isn’t like that. Every chapter contains legitimate value and it lays out a system that will help your organization stop spinning its wheels.

I read Traction in April 2010 and started applying it to my consulting business. We are an information technology consulting firm, with 10 consultants (including me) working on around 5 projects at any given time. Applying the EOS has brought about a big change in the way I approach my business. Our situation is typical of other consulting firms: 99% of the energy in the firm is spent on serving our clients, so not much attention is paid to "working on the business."Rather than write a review of the book, I think some readers might benefit from seeing the practical application of the EOS model described in the book:I did the Organizational Checkup candidly and scored 53%. Here's the status of the other areas:1. Vision: Complete. Has been reviewed and updated with the input of the team. The V/TO is a very useful tool.2. People: In progress. The Get It / Want It / Capacity assessment has been completed (with the team). The right person/right seat is a challenge because currently one person is occupying most of the seats. The book has given us the framework for right person/right seat and we are determining how to apply it without asking our team to overcommit themselves.3. Data: We've created our initial scorecard, and we jointly reviewed it in May and June. The next monthly review is in mid-July, and we will be adding more metrics. More info here on my blog post: [...]4. Issues: We had an external consultant spend time with us in June to observe our operations and provide us a candid assessment. As a result, we've got a list of issues and recommendations. The implementation of the major items is not yet certain. We have to face the choice between focusing on client work versus working on the business. Some of the issues won't be addressed until I remove myself substantially from client work and act like a CEO.5. Processes: We were already fairly strong in the processes that affect our clients (project delivery, proposals, estimating, recruiting etc.). Some of our internal processes are being improved as a result of having worked on the scorecard.6. Traction: We're not there yet (as of early July 2010). We need to make the tough choices (and accompanying investment in the roles) before we can have proper accountability, communication and teamwork for executing our plan and achieving our goals. Our focus remains on doing innovative things for our clients, and I believe that's the right thing to do. It will not be practical to hire a new CEO. So, I will be stepping away from billable roles, and "working on the business instead of in the business."Overall, I highly recommend this book to any business owner who wants a frank assessment of what's going well and what can be done better. This book is like a mirror. In our case, it is motivational and will help provide a better experience for our team members and clients.