Traction by Gino Wickman - A No-Look Book Summary

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⏱️ ~ 9 minutes 34 seconds read

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OK, we've all seen the inspirational quotes about "progress over perfection".

Let's be honest, progress is all well and good unless your progress has merely gone from underwhelming to slightly above underwhelming (shout-out to Mr Sergeant, my year nine maths teacher for the quote).

Progress is not just measured as a comparison, but also in velocity. Forward momentum.

When it comes to business, product-market fit and growth, that forward momentum is called traction.

And that, dear reader, also happens to be the name of this week's book in review: Traction by Gino Wickman.

I read it, so you don't have to. And no one will ever know 🤫 

Gino loves a good analogy (as all business authors do) and Gino's go-to here is a tidy visual of successful teams and businesses being directed and executing via a five-spoke wheel with a thick tyre tread.

OK stay with me here.

The spokes represent the five vital questions that every team needs to answer to succeed. We’ll get to those in a tick.

And the tyre? Well, that's the execution system you need to gain some serious traction.

It's literally and figuratively where the rubber hits the road. So, let's take a look at these spokes and then roll-on to the tyre tread 🛞

THE 5️⃣ QUESTIONS

Gino challenges teams to answer the following ‘Five Spokes’ questions.

With these answered, you have everything straight to then start developing your execution system.

1️⃣ - Where do you want to go? Create a crystal-clear picture of exactly where you want the team or business to be in 10 years, three years, and one year. 

Take some time to detail what this looks like, how does the team feel about it? Make your ideal state seem real. But keep it realistic too, especially in the one and three-year horizons. 

A great way to punch your daily motivation in the guts is to make unrealistic targets that you know ain't going to happen. So be ambitious but keep it real, Elon 🚀🤔

2️⃣ - What kind of data do I need to track each week? Now is the time to knock up a clear scorecard that keeps tabs on the activities you wanna improve week after week. 

This should be a mix of leading indicators and KPIs. That scorecard is like the heartbeat of your team, pumping motivation through its veins 📊❤️‍🔥

3️⃣ - How am I going to achieve my vision as efficiently as possible? Here's where you identify the processes, checklists, capabilities and systems that'll help you hit those scorecard numbers week after week. 

This is not nailed in an afternoon, this is something you get your MVD (Minimum Viable Documentation - yup, just invented that) together for and then keep on refining week after week, month after month. Go you ✅

4️⃣ - Who's doing the work? And most importantly do they like it, want it, and have the chops to do it well? Make damn sure everyone in your team knows their role, wants to kick some serious ass, and has the time, energy, tools and skills to back it up 🤓

5️⃣ - Why might we still fail? 🤦 Even with everything above nailed, how could this still go wrong? I know you’ve been jonesing to put on the ol' Black Hat. Go for it,  just let your inner-worry-wart loose 🎩

List out all the issues and reasonable blockers that could screw up your growth or bury your plans six feet under. 

If you've ever done a SWOT analysis, the 'Weaknesses' and 'Threats' quadrants will basically take care of this for you. 

Once you have your list, work through the actions and mitigations you can take (they'll come in handy later). Identify 'em and squash 'em like bugs 🥾🪲

Well done you. You've now worked through the vision, data, processes, people, and issues spokes of Gino Wickman's Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS).

If you tackle all five of them, you should be feeling confident you're about as well planned as a marketing leader can be.

HOW THE WORK GETS DONE 🧑‍🏭 

At this point I am reminded of that famous Mike Tyson quote, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth".

Here's the deal: if you don't have an execution system in place, your vision won't get off the ground, and you'll be stuck daydreaming. 

As Gino Wickman likes to say, "Vision without traction is merely hallucination." 

Gino's execution system (or thick tyre tread), is composed of three things: rocks, individual numbers, and a regular meeting pulse. Let's take a quick look at them now.

🪨 Rocks 🤘

These bad boys are your 90-day priorities. When everyone in your team has rocks aligned with the one, three and 10-year vision, you stop spinning your wheels and start moving forward together.

Here Gino pulls another analogy about how we spend our days. 

Picture this: you've got a glass jar on a table. Next to it, you got rocks, gravel, and sand. The jar represents your workday. 

The rocks are your top priorities. Gravel represents your daily responsibilities, and sand is all the other slacks, emails, birthday cards and spotify playlist updates that soak up your attention during the day.

Most people fill their jar with gravel and sand, leaving little-to-no room for the rocks.

But not you! 

Get everyone to put their rocks in first by reserving their peak focus time each day to make progress on a 90-day priority that drives the team towards its vision. 

Make sure everyone's focused on one to five rocks every 90 days, and then have some fresh rocks in mind for every 90-day period going forward.

📈 Individual numbers 😀

Numbers make things crystal clear, get people committed, and ignite a bit of healthy competition. 

As a leader, you're making sure everyone's got a number they eyeball every day and strive to improve. 

That number should be a clear indicator of what they need to focus on to crush their 90-day rocks. 

If a 90-day goal is like a wild cross-country bike trip from Sydney to Melbourne, then their individual number is the kilometres they've got to pedal each day to hit Ringers, Springers or Nazza Wazza on time (I see you Melbourne peeps ✊)

♻️ Regular meeting pulse 👥

Yeah, yeah, meetings ugh 🥱 - Who the hell wants more meetings, right?

But a well-run weekly meeting can hold everyone accountable and keep that traction um... on track. 

A top-notch "traction meeting" revolves around three things: rocks, issues, and action plans. You see where this is going right?

Round up the gang and have them publicly acknowledge if their quarterly rock is on track or off track. When people spill the beans on their progress in a weekly meeting with their peers, they tend to make sure those rocks are in the jar first.

Have each member open up about two issues they're wrestling with. 

Sharing those struggles builds trust and shows vulnerability in the team. Make sure you do this with your own issues too. 

Once you've had some time on the couch, it's time to focus on solutions 💡

Next is where the team comes up with a plan to tackle the top three issues raised in the meeting. A problem shared is a problem halved right? This is both very cathartic for the team, and also super-powerful in bonding the team.

Hold a weekly meeting with these three agenda items, and watch people step up, trust each other more, and come together to not only solve big issues but materially move the business forward ⏩

OK, LET’S WRAP THIS UP 🫠 

Although Gino’s got the full A-Z model, there’s heaps of good stuff within it that can be implemented individually. And it works.

I’ve personally taken a leaf out of the 90-day “rocks” planning concept and am looking to integrate some of the secret sauce of the “Traction meetings” with my team soon.

A few example questions you might want to ask yourself to put “traction” into your work:

• Are you making clear weekly/ monthly progress on a strategic goal?

  • If not you might want to consider pinching the concept of “rocks”.

• Not sure if your even making progress on a roadmap vs. just ripping through a backlog?

  • You might want to pause to ensure you have the right KPI’s to reflect on daily and show your moving in the right direction.

• Do you and your team support each other through tricky challenges?

  • If not you could look to start running regular “traction meetings” to hold each other accountable, share challenges and problems solve as a group.

• Are you running into significant barriers to progress every other week?

  • Perhaps you need to sit down as a team and ideate on all the issues that potentially sit between you and your 1, 3 and 5 year goals. Then develop mitigations for them.

There you have it, the "Traction" model by Gino Wickman. I read it, so you don't have to 🤫 

You can pick yourself up a copy from amazon here if you'd like to check my homework or dive a little deeper. It's a damn fine read, even with the spoilers.

I’m keen to understand:

• Have you used any of these concepts (or similar) to improve your marketing or business performance?

• How might you look to integrate some of the ‘Traction’ framework into your business or work?

I’m keen to hear your thoughts. Simply hit reply to this email.

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