Quarterly Offsite Meetings
At Menlo Group Commercial Real Estate, we follow the principles outlined by the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), and I can’t imagine running my business without the structure and approach the system provides.
As part of EOS, our leadership team meets quarterly for a daylong offsite meeting. In these meetings, we review what we’ve accomplished the previous quarter, what we need to do to stay on track for the year and what challenges we are currently facing as a company. Our quarterly meetings are always worthwhile and leave us feeling united as a leadership team and excited about the upcoming quarter.
The success of these meetings inspired me to apply these principles to my family.
To provide a bit of background, I have five energetic young kids currently ranging in age from 2 to 13 years-old. My wife homeschools our kids—a decision that is not always supported by others, but we feel is right for our family. My wife is extremely patient and does a great job with the kids.
I asked my wife if she would be open to having an offsite meeting and applying the principles I’ve learned through EOS and Strategic Coach to our family. She tends to be more free-spirited than me but said yes.
I was nervous that the meeting would create tension or be awkward, and to be honest, it did start out a bit uncomfortably. But we ended up having an amazing day as we outlined our vision for our family.
I have included here a rough outline of the EOS Vision Building Day topics and added a few of my own thoughts:
Core Values: Individual, family, team
Core Focus: Your personal statement in the market, your tag/brand or your hedgehog. Determine where I will and will not play. For example, my professional core focus is to be the go-to broker for high growth companies.
Lifetime Goals: What we hope to do and become in our lifetime.
10-Year Target: Your Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG). If we were meeting 10 years from today, what things do you want to say you have accomplished in this role?
Make your goals SMART
Write down the date by which you’ll complete this goal
Marketing Strategy: My wife and I skipped this part entirely.
Target Market – Menlo Group has a predetermined list based on demographic, geographic and psychographic factors
Three Uniques – The Menlo Process, Menlo Trusted Advisors and Menlo Way
Proven Process – Must be Follow By All (FBA)
Guarantee – My professional guarantee is termination at any time that isn’t conducive to the success of my clients or business
3-Year Picture: Unified vision of where we want to be in three years.
For business, this should include a revenue goal
What are the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to get there?
1-Year Plan: What we need to get done this year to stay on target with our 3-Year Picture.
Set qualitative and quantitative goals
Use the Strategic Coach Planner
Quarterly Rocks: Most important tasks and projects to complete in the next 90 days.
Issues List: Address problems or obstacles that may prevent success.
After completing this exercise with my wife, we found that we have three clear core values that four of our five kids know, understand and strive to live every day. (Our little man is too young to grasp these concepts quite yet.) We review our core values, set rocks and process issues with our kids at least monthly as a result of the structure.
I feel strongly that EOS is applicable not only to a company looking to grow but also to a family looking for structure and progress.