How One EOS Implementer® Uses Traction Tools with Clients

John McMahon has been immersed in the EOS world since 2012—first as a business owner, and then as a Certified EOS Implementer. He left his company in 2014 and felt compelled to help other people get the same kind of results in their businesses that he saw in his own.

Now, as an EOS Implementer, John draws on his experience as an operator and an Integrator at his own company. “I know what it’s like to sit in the Ownership seat and the leadership team seat at the same time,” John said. “I ran EOS in my own company, so I’ve had the experience of navigating the purity of the EOS Tools with the reality of the business world. So I can empathize with those situations.”

John also uses Traction Tools software for EOS on a daily basis, and has several clients who use it too. We wanted to see what an Implementer gets out of Traction Tools, so we asked him to tell us how he uses the EOS software in his own business, and with his clients.

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An EOS Implementer’s Take on Traction Tools

Traction Tools: How long were you implementing EOS before using Traction Tools?

John McMahon: We’ve been using Traction Tools for at least two years, solid. They’ve been really great to work with, and I think the tool is really great. It has evolved over time, and it’s good to see the continued development.

TT: What difference has TT made for your business?

JM: The biggest thing as an Implementer is that it helps us manage our own business inside the same tools that our clients are using. That in and of itself is very helpful. We’re going through the same meeting pulse and process that we expect our clients to go through—and so we have to ask ourselves the same questions that they do. For example, do we count this as a warm lead for the Scorecard or not?

I think that Traction Tools in particular helps us to stay on the road with EOS.

TT: What is it about Traction Tools that has helped you to stay on the road?

JM: I think from my own business perspective, making sure that we constantly use the Text-a-To-Do and Text-an-Issue feature. That’s a real huge help to develop the discipline of creating Issues. That discipline is really important.

TT: How do you use Traction Tools with clients?

JM: I encourage every one of my clients to use Traction Tools. For those that use it, I help them set it up as soon as they get started with me. I think that it’s critical to make use of any tool that can accelerate your learning.

The tool is great, because it can do a number of great things, but the most important one is that it helps companies accelerate their learning in a way that avoids all the distractions that don’t add value—gathering paper, managing multiple spreadsheets and documents. I think Traction Tools makes it easy for them to do business with us.

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TT: What features in Traction Tools are most useful?

JM: The Issues List is huge—being able to prioritize the Issues and bring them to the top of the list. There are lots of little things that the application does.

For me, the lion’s share of the value of the tool is for my clients. Their ability to move Issues from the leadership team to other teams with the click of a button—it’s an amazing thing. People don’t realize how important that is, because it’s a discipline that teams need to learn. When they start solving Issues, they should ask themselves if this is an Issue that this team needs to solve. And a lot of times, the answer is no. If they don’t have a place to put the Issue, then it just goes into a black hole. If you’re using paper, or Excel, there’s no place to put that Issue.

The first time I was with a client, auditing their Level 10 Meeting, they punted seven or eight Issues straight to the department Level 10 Meetings. They were jacked by it—“Get that to the Sales Level 10, get that to Operations.” That little feature is an amazing thing.

TT: What kinds of business results have you seen from Traction Tools?

JM: When a company is brand-new to EOS, their heads are swimming. Traction Tools gives them one less thing to process—everything they need to do is right there in one place. There’s no reason for them to worry about how to create a spreadsheet or a document to capture and track all their Rocks and Issues and Scorecard numbers. You take all those questions off the table.

All the features and benefits, that’s all great. But the real value is letting a team disconnect from the labor of managing all the documents and keeping things moving. It’s a big deal.

The other big benefit is that it gives the leadership team a much better chance of rolling the tools themselves into the functional teams. Because it’s already built. All they need to do is use the Accountability Chart to get people setup. So, from a rollout perspective, Traction Tools provides one of the best ways I’ve seen to accelerate that process.

TT: Thanks for your time, John!

Discover the Value of Traction Tools

More and more EOS Implementers are discovering the value of using Traction Tools—both for themselves and for their clients. We’ve built the software to help old pros and newbies alike boost their productivity and cut out the distractions that get in the way of running on EOS.

Find out what Traction Tools can do for your clients—get an on-demand demo today!

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