Endemic Uncertainty: Withstand the Storms With Traction and Resilient5
Communicators don’t work in a vacuum. You see this all the time. People will say a crisis was poorly handled without mentioning what happened to create the crisis. Or, you get credit for telling a great brand story from the field…but somebody in the field had to make it happen.
The point is that as we try to build resilience, communicators can’t do it alone.
This topic came up when I was meeting with Catherine Juon, who founded a leading-edge digital marketing agency and is now an EOS implementer.
What is EOS?
EOS is the Entrepreneurial Operating System, which is probably more familiar to you from the book Traction. It’s a system for business owners to get everyone focused on the goals, eliminate drama around the workplace and live a better life.
I’m a big proponent of the last one. You want to create work that supports the life you want to live, not slap your life together to support your work.
As you know, I am writing a lot about resilience. Organizations should stop trying to predict the future and design their organization’s ecosystem to be resilient, to sway with the shockwaves. This means building trust, culture, engagement, relevance, and understanding—the Resilient5—throughout a stakeholder ecosystem. (See here for the Ultimate Guide to Stakeholder Management).
Traction and COVID
Catherine told me that when COVID hit, EOS companies didn’t experience a shock. They had their goals and they knew what their core business was and what priorities needed to be sustained through the crisis and they just adapted in a natural and seamless way.
They were resilient and only because of the work they did before the crisis hit. That’s the only way it works.
This is what we are talking about with Resilient5, too.
How are EOS and Reslient5 Alike?
For me, based on our talk, here are some key points common to both approaches.
It isn’t easy and it doesn’t happen by accident. It takes hard work and smart work.
Systems like this require leaders and role players. You can argue semantics here—in a sense people can show leadership in any role. I’m thinking of “Capital-L Leadership” and role players. You have to have people in the c-suite who are committed to this program. And then you have to have people in the organization who see what needs to be done and do it with focus and creativity.
You hear the phrase “paint a picture”—a lot. That really appeals to the English Major in me. The idea is that when you have a future state you want to create, (see that word), you have to use your imagination to experience it. How will it look? How will it feel? In communications, we say that kind of work creates a sticky idea. Which you need when the wind blows.
What does EOS mean for communicators?
I do believe that there are some specific benefits to EOS for communicators. By specific, I mean beyond the benefits to the overall company—things that will allow us to do our best work.
The biggest, to me, is the ability to communicate your brand promises with confidence. We have all been there. You talk about one of the company’s “brand values” and then stare at the ceiling at night wondering if the person who answers the phone is “aligned.” With an EOS company, everyone will be keeping the promises of the brand.
Have you had an idea, gotten consensus on a key initiative, researched it, and then had it die on the desk of a VP who either didn’t understand it, was threatened by it, or couldn’t be bothered and ignored it until it was no longer relevant? In an EOS company, that shouldn’t happen.
A sharpened focus really impacts the marketing function. Under EOS, you have to really think about who your prospects are. This is really fun for marketing. We get to exit the “something for everyone, our primary target is females but our secondary target is males” school and create content for people we get the chance to understand.
Also, the increased alignment throughout the organization will create better stories to tell.
Finally, rather than damage control, you get to sharpen a competitive advantage in all arenas—marketing, recruiting, media relations, community relations.
This is the time of year where we evaluate where we are and look ahead. To me, it seems like a good time to recognize that we live in an uncertain world. and make real changes to prepare.