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The Audit Podcast
Ep 279: Using EOS to Build a Stronger Audit Function w/ Chris Hallberg (GoExpand
00:36:53
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- [00:00]
A
It's not a choose your own adventure, it's opt in or opt out. So like, back to the vision. When someone says, let me look that up, you've already lost. It shouldn't. It should be simple. It just is. Like, we're here to do these three things.
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B
Have you ever been to a conference and at some point you're like, I didn't really get anything out of that, or I don't have anything practical, tactical to take back and do. That's why we started the Audit analytics and AI conference, because I can empathize. I did the same thing. That's cool. Can you show me how to do it? And so as part of the analytics and AI conference, especially the spring conference that we have on May 20 this year, from 9 to 4 Central, it's 9 to 4 Chicago time. We have six presenters, you can get seven CPEs, and it's some of the best presenters that we've had over the five years that we've been doing this conference. So these are the ones that I've seen personally, three of which for sure, I have gone back and watched their recordings, you know, months later to go, I know they did this thing that was really cool. Let me go back and watch it. So I can do it too. So there's no way that you won't have something you can actually do relative to analytics and or AI. So some of the fine folks we have coming back, Brittany McKinley, Brian McNally and Val Zappia from Elevations Credit Union, Macy's and Victoria's Secret, respectively, all three of those. I've gone back and watched their sessions from the prior years to see what they did so I could replicate it on my end. And then we have Paul Kerstein and Madeline Novelli from Vulcan Materials, and they're going to show you how to use AI to build a. Like a central hub of audit intelligence paired with a library of reusable AI prompts. So you can. So any auditor on the team can use analytics. We also have multiple people from the Williams Energy audit team. So they have a framework of using AI to do analytics, but then each one prefers different tools. So one person's like, I like Python, so they do theirs in Python. 1 likes R, they do it in R. 1 likes Power BI, they do it in Power BI. They also use data bricks. And so there's some functionality they do in databricks for SQL or even Python in there if they wanted to. So it's one framework that gets applied and everyone kind of interprets it and uses it differently is fantastic. And then the last of our speaker slots, so we have five. The last one. We are having to keep a secret for now and hope to be able to tell you as soon as possible what that's going to be. But, but I think we can at least say it's going to be very innovative. All right, like I said, it is May 20, 9 o' clock till 4 o' clock central. You can search Audit Analytics Conference. It should be towards the top. If not the top. You can go to The Audit analytics conference.com links are in the show notes. You can go to my page on LinkedIn. Trent Russell find me. There's links there if you follow me. It's pretty hard to miss some of the posts that we're going to be putting up for the conference this year. So this is probably the most excited I've been about this conference since the very first one that we did. All right, hope to see you guys there. Thank you. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Audit Podcast. I'm your host, Trent Russell. Today on the show we have Chris Hallberg. Chris is the CEO and founder at Business Sergeant. So any ex military folks highly recommend checking that out. He's also the president and founder of Go Expand, where he implements EOS. Chris is also named to Inc.com's top 50 leadership and management experts. For those that aren't familiar with eos, we we talk about it kind of from the jump on this episode, but it's basically an operating system. It's a process. It's a framework for entrepreneurs to use to build their business and have processes to follow to improve upon that business as well. And so Chris is the go to expert on this. Working with very large companies, usually EOs you see in like relatively smaller companies or boutiques and then try to scale it up and some people have issues with it. Chris is able to do that at very, very large organizations. So if you're wondering why we had Chris on, there's a lot of elements, practices, tactics, procedures within EOS that are applicable to internal audit or really anyone else, like any other department can also use a lot of these tools. And so with Chris being the expert, we wanted to have him on and talk about a few of these. There's six and Chris will go into a little bit of detail on all of them. But the three that we hit on are the vision issues and then traction. So with the vision, we just kind of wanted to understand how we make people care about the vision. How do we make the vision actually Count issues. Some people might be familiar with that in the sense of like a retrospective. If you ever do retrospective, what's working, what's not working, let's fix it, that kind of thing. But then also I thought it would be really interesting we mentioned this on the show to apply the issues piece. So normally you would apply internally to like your department, your team and how to handle issues, but considering that's a large part of what we do in internal audit, I thought it'd be interesting to speak on that one a little bit more to think about. Okay. Like maybe when we find an issue relative to our audit work, how that could be handled, maybe different thought process applied to that. So we do go into detail on all these, but really recommend, I mean I'm sure there's plenty of blogs out there on all this stuff also to read about maybe the issues, the traction, the vision one in a little bit more detail and see how you could bring that into internal audit. I made a call out during the show to anyone who does that specifically with the issue. So if anyone listens to this episode and goes, yeah, we should maybe give that a shot, see what it's like, please let me know. And then we'd love to have you come on the show and share it with the rest of the audience. Lastly, we talk about traction and that's where they talk about in the eos world rocks nomenclature they use and then the meeting pulse as well. So with that said, here we go. Chris, just so the audience gets to know a little something about you. Is there like a, a prompt that you've used professionally or personally that you could share with us where you found a lot of value? Maybe they could pick it up and run with it also.
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A
Yeah, I've chat GTP myself a few times and that's weird like, like it's not very accurate, but I use Chat GTP primarily for like strategic stuff, marketing stuff. Like I'll say I have an idea. So I'll put a paragraph together and I'm make it better or pretend you're award winning Madison Avenue advertising executive. How do you summarize the entire paragraph in three words with an image? Like that's the stuff that blows me away because great advertising, like I like to put 10 pounds of stuff in a 5lb bag like most people do. But if you see like a, an award winning campaign, it's a statement and an image and it just makes you want to take action like like Mad Men type stuff. So that's what I use chat for. It's it's fun. You know, I like to joke. It adds, you know, 20 points to IQ to you if you use it correctly. Right. But you know, that's about what it does at scale at your business. So if you're not leveraging like an OpenAI workspace and putting process there, like that's what I recommend to my clients because like imagine adding 20 IQ points to your entire staff all at once. Like, it's a powerful thing.
- [07:25]
B
It's a good way to, that's a good way to look at it. Okay, so talking about your clients, I know you are this EOS expert. I'm going to give you do your kind of 60 seconds on EOS. For those that are not familiar with it, I'll tell you, when I first went out on my own, I told somebody that I was doing it and they're like, awesome, read this book. And I went, okay, well here's the 50th book. Someone you know, when you go out on your own, you tell somebody, they go, oh, you got to read this book and this book. And so I did read it and there was a lot of good stuff in there. And so that's really where I want to kind of hang out today is there's a few tools that we're going to hit on that you and I are going to hit on that. I feel like regardless of internal audit or otherwise, that you can use that you can like people can pull from this EOS way of, of running a team, a project, an organization. And so that's where I want to hit on. But first I did want you to set the stage for the audience high level, what is eos and maybe why should they even care about it?
- [08:23]
A
Yeah, that's an awesome question, Trent. I'll be happy to satisfy that. Usually that's how EOS is mentioned. It's a, it's a, someone hit you on the arm and say, hey, read this book. CEO to CEO. It's usually how it happens. Or someone will say, hey, read this book. Oh, another middle, lower middle tier business book. Like, like I have a shelf full of them, right? Like who needs another business book? And usually someone says, no, this one's different. Right? That's usually what what's said to you. Like, no, I really want you to read this. So Gino Wickman is the author of Traction. So it's called Traction Get a grip on your business. That's the book where he basically has like 90% of the operating system just in the book so you can self implement. So there's three ways to do it. Just read the book and do a really poor job, right? That's probably like numerically the most popular way. Don't do it. Second way, go to EOS worldwide and do what they call the self implementing academy where you get like the guides and when to do it, the timing, all the resources. So someone on your team embedded that works there who doesn't teach EOS professionally like myself does the implementation. Number two, number three, a professional, certified or expert EOS implement or somebody that's, you know, in my case like 135 companies over 12 years throughout the two year process. So like, like varying degrees of experience. But the process itself is quite simple. And there's basically six key components of eos. So I like to draw, I like to joke. EOS is like CrossFit for business. If you do these six core exercises, you'll look like an action figure. You're, you'll have a ripped, you know, company that can lift cars. So the first one is the vision component and that's getting everyone 100% on the same page opted into the vision that we've created or 100% out. Most companies fail because a very large percentage is there and a very equally large percentage could, could, could give a damn either way. And when we do the 100%, hell yeah. Versus 100%, hell no. If we're into Venn diagrams, the three of them, we connect them like links, right? Hell yeah, let's do this. Hell no. Let's do this. The middle circle is just hell with flames on it, right? I think that comes from Michael Chandler's Time warriors, where I, where I got that, that book. So eight questions, Core values. Who are we? Core focus. Why do we exist? What do we do? 10 year target marketing strategy, 3 year picture, 1 year plan. Quarterly rocks. Quarterly rocks are projects, initiatives, priorities named after the late Dr. Stephen Covey. And then lastly, long term issues. So to degree we all know what that is and everyone's like here for that and nothing else. That is a game changer. Just the first key component. Very few companies are actually on the same page because there's no one page or two pages for us to get on. There's way too much. So you're the ability for people to lean into things has diminished. These smartphones, I don't know who named them that because I don't know anyone's getting smarter with that, right? Other than being able to use your chat to enhance your ideas. And then the second part of that is the shared by all, okay, so once everyone's in it to win it and the people that like, I want to do half of that. Well, you can't do half of that. You're going to do all of it or none of it. Second key component, Trent, that is the people component. And this comes right from Jim Collins. Masterpiece good to great, right? People in the right seats. So right people share your core values. They're weird, just like you are. You know, we can weird out, nerd out together on these things. They value what we value. So if you guys are really hard workers and someone's kind of lazy, they're just not going to fit culturally. If everyone's really lazy and someone comes in, hey, slow down. Making us look bad, right? So like either way that works. And then right seats acronym. I'm ex military. Ex military. People love EOS because there's just full acronyms. Gwc, get it, want it, have the capacity. So being the right person in the right seat, once we get a very high percentage, you have a great company. But we also have right people in the wrong seat and wrong people in the right seat and wrong people in the wrong seat. Those are the other things. Three combinations. Then we go over to the third key component, which is the data component. And that's getting past the egos, the subjectives, the personalities. All the auditors love the data component, right? Because if all we got are, let's go with mine. I'm more of a data person. Gut feeling plus data. Right. Forensic audits. There's the truth, right? So we have a scorecard. And a measurable scorecard is like when you do this thing, good things happen. Let's measure the good things. Let's also measure the bad things and limit those. And if we have a weekly activity measurement that brings a monthly result. So if you're missing the result, you just turn up the activities. Until we get into parity strong and vision strong in people, strong in data. Now we're open and honest, lucid problems or issues. The fourth key component, the issues component. And that's just saying, hey, we have a process, another acronym. IDS identify the root issue. Not the convenient symptom that keeps reappearing, but the actual root issue could be connected to the boss, a sacred cow, an 800 pound gorilla, something like that. And then we get to the discussion phase. That could literally be two seconds, I will do this. Or it could be a knockdown, drag out discussion. And then we solve it. And we solve it with to DOS, which are seven day action items and then every week we require 90% of the promises to come true. That's where the traction actually comes from. Fifth key component, that is the process component and that's pretty much just getting the 20% that brings you the 80% checklist outlines software based rules, stuff that customers love, things we've nailed. So then we can scale not doing high use items, wear items in a one off capacity which is frustrating for everybody, including your clients. And then we just follow it and when we say something, it's compulsatory. If you don't follow it, you don't work here. If it doesn't have to be done this exact way, knock yourself out. Here are the parameters we want. This is more of a guideline. And then the sixth and final key component is the traction component and that's bringing that vision down to the ground, making a reality. We do that by creating a 90 day world and creating these things called rocks. Right? Rocks are big priorities, strategic initiatives usually outside the day to day one done. Give us a new capacity, new capability. So think 1/4 to make and test a new process, a new workflow and then the following quarter to get the whole team to fully embrace it. Followed by all and know, get rid of the old way of doing it. And then we create this 90 day world, right? And then we have a meeting pulse. Most people meet too often and because they meet so much they don't really have time to fulfill their commitments. They just like talk therapy sometimes it's not great just rehashing this stuff and right when it's there, hey, time's up. Right? So people are figuring out that there's, there's other ways to deal with issues that are productive. So rather just have one super bowl meeting where we make a bunch of commitments and then I'll see you next week at the same time, same place with a very structured, structured agenda. And it's a pass fail that that really brings the traction to any business. And and focus is in commitment. Right. Are central at all six of those. So like ask yourself how good is my business at those six things? And if the answer we're like 80, 90% strong in all six of those, you probably have a world class business that makes twice the EBITDA makes a bunch of best place to work awards. Those are generally the outcomes of a successful EOS implementation. Implementation.
- [15:53]
B
All right. And usually I don't spend time like explaining an acronym but for those that might have missed it, EOS is entrepreneurial operating system. So if you think about an operation operating system on your phone or the operating system, on your laptop or whatever it's an operating system for. It starts with the E, and that's entrepreneur. But I mean, it applies to. Then the reason we're having you on, Chris, you can apply it to any given job, function or department. So obviously here we're talking internal audit, most specifically. And so that's. That's what this whole framework is. It's basically EOS is basically, here's how to run a business. Now we're going to take Chris's expertise and hit on a few elements of that that are we hopefully can be tactical enough to apply within the internal audit or I don't know if we have a random marketing team listening. You could probably take something from this also. But I want to. There's three that I want to hit on. Vision issues and traction. And so for vision, for my experience, I've seen this, even with an internal audit is where it's like, I'll go, all right, what's the vision for? As we're developing a strategy for them, right? Like a analytics AI strategy. I go, what's the vision for internal audit? And they're like, let me go find that. Okay, here it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This looks about right. I think this is the last one that we did. And so it's just. It feels like a check the box exercise a lot of times, like, hey, we're going to go on this retreat and we're going to come up with these vision statements and a strategy, and then you kind of get back and maybe it's felt at the very top, but at the bottom. I know, like, when I was at the bottom of a huge 400,000 employee organization, I'd be like, this doesn't resonate with me at all. I don't feel like I'm even a part of this that you guys are talking about. I'm glad you had fun, you know, in Colorado, you know, at your cabin doing all the cool stuff. But what this, I don't really feel it. So the thing that I guess maybe I struggle with and maybe other people struggle with relative vision that I want to ask you is how do. How do you. How do we make people care about the vision and how do we make the vision actually count? Like, how does it. How can we make it work instead of just being. Here's some words that we're going to throw on a piece of paper and we'll mention it once a year to our audit committee, and that's about it.
- [18:00]
A
Yeah, it seems like, your experience is very common. Like, there's some sort of a magical dartboard in the CEO's office. Guns must be behind the door, and they're like, what do we do? I'm like, bang. Okay, just tell them that, and they'll be fine for another year. So, first off, you know, the vision of the company should come from the founder, the leader. The responsible party could be the board, could be a family office, could be just a single entrepreneur. But in the absence of a single leader, we will have no leaders. So who's. Who's. Whose responsibility is it to say who we are, why we exist, and what we do? And the world, you know, right or wrong, has become, you know, overly inclusive in many areas, which includes, tell us, tell us, you know what. What you'd like to accomplish, and we'll just facilitate that versus, hey, this is kind of like what we're spending millions of dollars on. You want to help us that, we'll pay you for it. So, like, it's not a choose your own adventure. It's opt in or opt out. So, like, back to the vision. When someone says, let me look that up, you've already lost it. It shouldn't. It should be simple. It just is. Like, we're here to do these three things. This is our bias for action. These are our core values. This is our purpose, cause or passion statement, mission statement, and everything. Every decision is made under that filter, including whatever we're doing here. So if we know this is our mission and this is our values, I should be able to answer any question just based on that, because they're not fake things that you have in the reception area. They're things that are everywhere. And we talk about our core values and our culture. We talk about our vision. And so EOs, every 90 days, we have, like, every 90 days, we have this cadence. It's pre game with your team. Ask them, how's this working? How's this not working? Do you have any ideas? So the first answer, Trent, is to ask your team what we're doing. Is it feel good? Do you see anything that needs to be changed? Are we still current? Are there any emerging things that could enhance this? This? Like, you have all these people, like, no one ever asked them. So just ask them, and then bring that information to the strategic, you know, the quarterly planning session. And then we. We go back into that document, and if it's not on the document, it's not really important. If it is on the document, it's super important. And everyone needs to do It, It's a two page document. So to answer your question directly, it's. It's very. Having a very small vision and having it very well communicated, then that's an actual guideline that we can all follow and we don't have to have all these disparate conversations. In the absence of that, it's. Let's pull up this thing. It's a bunch of buzzwords, corporate speak. This doesn't mean anything. This means they spent a weekend in Colorado and did two hours of planning and 10 hours of skiing. So you got to keep it simple and they just have to be opting in or out. So there's too many possibilities. In business, people don't die from starvation, they die from indigestion trying to eat too many things at once. So, like, the neat thing about an EOS company is we are like, we know who we are, we know who we serve, and we know why they choose us. And we would never mess with one of those attractive things that are uniques and, and you know what I mean? So, like, simplify is the quick answer. I just gave you the long answer.
- [21:25]
B
We've. I mean, it's one of those things. I said this at a conference one time, and I wasn't joking, but people laughed and I was like, that wasn't supposed to be a joke. But like, we help people craft their vision statements also. And usually it's like, it's simple language. And then I tell them, if you want to like, add all the buzzwords and the fancy stuff or whatever, because that's what you want or you feel like that's what the board needs, that's cool. You can do that. But keep this version here locally between the team. Take the version that we helped write with you, put that into ChatGPT and say, Write this as a vision statement and it'll give you every dumb buzzword that you could ever want. Present that. So I said that people laughed and I was like, no, we literally did that with two. Two companies we've worked with. But I think the. For me, the vision and where. I don't know, maybe it took until we started Green Skies, and even then, until AI hit, I guess, a couple years ago to where it really. I went, oh, yeah, this is really why it matters. We've always been about data and analytics for internal audit. AI hit and then it's like, well, we got to jump on that, right? And so we kind of floundered a little bit and then came back and went, no, we make analytics actually work for Internal audit, like that's what we do. And so we went let's use AI to make analytics actually work for internal audit. And then everything just kind of fell into place after that. So having that does like it actually matters and you can actually use it. And it's not just fluff is what I'm has been my personal experience. But that's my tangent on vision statements. Okay. With that said, second of the three I want to hit on was issues. And so when I think about the issues component, it's what's working and what's not working, which has a lot of agile kind of concepts to it relative to the retrospective for teams that run that. What's working, what's not working, how do we fix this? All that kind of good stuff. So with that said, again, tactical, to the extent you're okay with it, share with us kind of the issues protocol and maybe a tool or something that, that listeners can tactically walk away with.
- [23:27]
A
Yeah. First thing is everyone looks at an issue as a negative thing. Like almost everyone, 80% of the population. Right. Just like I get it. The, the negative is so much easier to find the positive in the world we live in. All right, that's headlines, how we are programmed and those types of things. So it's just an issue, it's something that requires discussion. So EOS has a big 90 day cutoff short term issue. Like yeah, I'm down to solve that whenever you are in the current quarter. Whenever you're ready, let's go. Ooh, that issue. Yeah, that's an issue. We can't solve that in the next 90 days. We have some formational preparatory issues we need to knock out. So let's put that on the long term issues list. But it's great therapy. It's great cathartic to just say it's a problem and, and know you can't deal with it, but know you're doing the things, the precursors to deal with it. So that's a long term mission. Then the third issues list that every team has is a solved issues, a boneyard. That way when one of your Trent, you know, brains. Brains. Oh, your issue came back, it's now a zombie issue. It's out in the parking lot. It's back. It's because you solved it at a symptomatic level, not at the root level. So like if you just pull a weed, there'll be another weed. If you burn it with fire, cover it with concrete, no more weeds. So IDS is identified at the root issue. So how to get to the eye.
- [24:45]
B
Who.
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A
Who what? Who raised the issue? Who gets a high five for making us better? So I want to, I want to be thankful when someone brings up an issue. I don't want to transfer them to the Podunk, Arkansas field office, you know, for calling out the regional vice president, Michael Scott of Dunder Mifflin. Right. Because that's something Michael would do is send you to Canada or something like.
- [25:06]
B
Or wherever.
- [25:08]
A
Right. Who. Who you talking to on the accountability chart? Right. We don't have an organizational chart of us. We have an ac. Like, what do you own? What are you accountable for? These five things are going good, high five. If these are bad, turn around. Like kicking the pants, do better. So single source of accountability is a big part of it. And that's why the system works well, because we're not sharing accountability. Because sharing accountability is generally low or no accountability versus one set of eyes to high five or tune up. That is a much better way to do it. And then the last one is, what's your issue in one sentence? And it shouldn't start with four score seven years ago. Like, just no sandwiching. Right. It's a corporate thing where you get two pieces of praise for the bread and your feedback. We're all, well, no carbs at eos. We are carnivores. We're just going to get right to it. With all love and respect, assume positive intent, live your core values. Trent, you're three weeks in a row with the red number. And when I listen to you solve it. Last two weeks, I didn't think it was going to be green. You're solved today. Today. Even worse than the last two. I have a. I think you have a blind spot. Would you be open to hearing that in front of your peers? I would. And then having that conversation and you not getting all upset with me, hey, thanks. I did have a blind spot. Thanks for bringing that in the light. You know that kind of stuff. Right? So who raised it? Who gets a high five? Who owns it? Everyone. The other part of the second one is everyone else. Hush. See it all the time. Got a really smart finance guy and he's diving in to solve the marketing person's issues and the sales. And it's like, listen, we're not having a financial conversation. Be quiet. Like, when it's your time to talk, everyone else is going to be quiet because you're the finance person. But we get that bunch ball, that group think. You ever see a bunch of 8 year olds play soccer? It's like A cloud of dust, the ball squirts out and then the mob goes there and you're like, why is the goalie at midfield? Like, well, they're eight. You know what I mean? You watch professional MLS soccer and you know the attackers are attacking, the defenders are defending, the goalies are somewhere by the goal. So that's a really big part of it. Then we get into the discussion phase and that could be really quick or that could require, okay, this affects operations, finance and sales. Let's get all these leaders to make sure whatever decisions aren't going to be putting a burden on your team or break the process or something like that. And then we solve issues with TO dos. To DOS are seven day action items. So the neat thing about EOS is the I would rather have you push back and say, I'm sorry Trent, I cannot take this to do for next week for these reasons. And then you declutter me in other places so I can put the proper time onto this. And then 90% of those promises need to be to done by next week. Or actually our problem isn't that we're not smart. We can't figure out. It's just we're full of, full of bs. We keep saying we're going to do stuff and we're not. So the issue is we're not accountable. Or the issue is we talk big and act small. So like, no, no, nothing wrong with the process, nothing wrong with the customer. It's just we're the reason. Why don't we just call it out and say my foul and move on. And then when those to DOS are done at 90%, like it's really undeniable to stop a business progressing and growing when 90% of their promises and tasks are completed week after week after week after week. So that's a big part of the issues component. And then we just have those three issues list and every team. So the leadership team issue might say fire Kevin. We're not sharing that list without some redactions because Kevin and Kevin's peers don't need to see that. But if I have a sales issues list, the issues list is all about sales. Same thing with marketing or whatever. And then we have a leadership team issues list, which is kind of a greatest hits album from all the other issues lists, the things that the senior people need to solve.
- [29:00]
B
Interesting is so we're talking about issues internally. So like if we're talking internal audit here, it would be like, what issues are we having internally? But then a large part of what we do is we find issues within the organization relative to a process or a control. And so I think even folks applying like we, we're hitting at this at a pretty high level. But if anyone digs into the issues part of EOS and applying that to, hey, these are the issues we found within the organization, maybe this is a way we, a protocol we could even say to follow on how to handle these. And I think it could be very, very useful for some teams. So if anyone's listening, they take up the banner and do that and then want to come on the show and share the results. That would be fantastic. I think that would be really good to have you on. So. All right, last bit that we have is on traction. I know this is where you mentioned rocks as well as the meeting pulse, so you could give us a little bit.
- [29:49]
A
This goes back to the vision component and that's why it's on the opposite side. Vision without traction is hallucination. I joke all the time, like I got vision. It's a dollar a pound. I've got a semi truck out back. How many pounds do you want? Traction, it's $10,000 a carrot. You know, it's really the rare thing. So. So the traction comes from creating this 90 day world. So the 90 day world is predicated on the one year plan, which is predicated on the three year picture, which is predicated on the 10 year target. So it's really military backwards planning. If you know you want to be well in three years, what's the right trajectory for us to be on one year. And then once you have the one year plan, the four quarters kind of make themselves so the rocks are changing the wheels on the moving bus. So think about as an executive we recommend like 80% tactical, 20% strategic, mid managers 90% tactical, 10% strategic, individual contributors 95% tactical, 5% strategic. But have a 200 person company and the leaders all have four or five rocks, the managers all have two rocks and everyone else has a rock. Now we have like hundreds of initiatives being done every quarter. Like again across an organization. Like you can connect the rocks. So like here are the company rocks and the company rocks are just a little bit more important. Move the needle like company Rock1C1. That's a no fail mission. My teams Rarely miss on C1 because we've prioritized it above everything else numerically. The other thing about eos is we rank and sort everything. So when you're not knowing, just do the highest ranking thing. You'll always be right. So it's it removes communication. When you, when you create, you know, large filters of what's really important, people don't have to think about it. They just abandon D3 department ROC3. If you own C1, C7, D1, D2, D3, you know, they just go, you put them back as something really good happens, you lose capacity or something really bad happens. But, but back to the rocks. If I have a huge goal, it might take four quarters, phase one, phase two, phase three and phase four in quarters to get it done. So it's just project management, but it's the prioritization and it can be a day to day thing if it's broken. But usually this is how we're, you know, building capacity and capability as we operate the business we already have. So think about a stair tread, right? You're investing in the riser or you have to pay for the next step before you get to put weight on it. So rocks are a good way to do it. And then the meeting pulse is back to. We have a two day annual to recast the three year, the one year we do team health. I love you Trent, but for the greater good of this organization, I need you to start or stop the following behaviors, right? And we do some personal history stuff and some team building, a dinner and some, some, some fun activities. And then, then we have a quarterly meeting to support those annual meetings. And then the team has a weekly, what we call level 10 because most meetings are like a 5. It could have been an email. So we're pretty high. If you do these five things, same place, same time, start on time, end on time, and use a very, very strict agenda, which makes for world class meetings. Most people get on EOs and they become huge meeting snobs. They, you know, want to jump on their pen until the pain ends in a meeting because it's just like no, no agenda. Like what are we even doing here? There's no accountability. This, this meeting sucks. So we become meeting snobs. When you're really good at that traction component. So the traction is applying the vision in an appropriate amount. Not too much, not too little, just right. And, and that's what kind of keeps the flywheel as, as you say go. Keeps everything classy.
- [33:31]
B
Excellent. I can tell that you are obviously based on the way we did your intro and what's out there publicly, clearly an expert on this, but having talked to you for all of whatever, 20 minutes or whatever, we could have picked any one of these and just gone, Chris, talk about this and then be pretty Blown away. It was very, very nicely done. So unless, let's see, I think you offended the entire country of Canada and rural Arkansas as well. So unless you want to offend any other geographical areas.
- [34:00]
A
No, and I love both of those places. Just for the record, I just had to come up with something I think about like a rural place or you know, the, the overseas office or something like that. Corporate America sends people in far away places. So that's really what I was getting at there. No, no disrespect to, to my Canadian or friends from Arkansas.
- [34:20]
B
All good, all good. So with that said, Chris, what do you want to leave the, the audience with?
- [34:24]
A
Well, if they want to get in touch with me, the first thing you can do is just connect with me on LinkedIn. Easy to find. If anyone's interested in talking more about EOS worldwide, they can just go to eosworldwide.com Chris Hulberg that's my site as an entrepreneur. It is called the Entreprene Entrepreneurial Operating System. I have two businesses that I'm the visionary of. I have integrators that fulfill these. But as the figurehead I have the Business Sergeant, which is an online community where we coach veterans, many of them special operations veterans in a business school, in an academy, and then we place them. So it's a veteran powered recruiting company. Like if you're having leadership issues, I can just get you a Green Beret or a Navy seal. We could just put them there. And the halo effect is very real. They can solve any problem unless you're splitting atoms or into nuclear fission. They can learn what you do in a quarter or two. And then secondly, go expand. Go expand.com is my agentic EOS app that's licensed by EOS and anyone running on EOS using one of the authorized software tools and Go Expand is one of them, really allows you to kind of glue the operating system together. Ours is highly connected versus siloed. It's very dynamic. It has AI search and an AI bot with chat so you can put all your process there and we're not disturbing people, we're just looking stuff up and then we have all the meetings in there and personality assessments, accountability charts, rocks, scorecards. So everything to run the OS and five or six people tools that my best performing clients use. So I just kind of stole the stack of my top performing people and put it in an easy affordable solution for anyone to use. So Business Sergeant, Go Expand and US Worldwide are the three places where I'm active and would love to hear from anyone from your audience.
- [36:16]
C
Hey everyone, thank you very much for listening to this episode of the Audit Podcast. Whatever platform you're listening on right now, I'm sure there's a subscribe button somewhere, so please hit the subscribe button there. If you're listening through itunes or Spotify, feel free to go give us that five star rating. It only took me about 16 seconds to give myself a five star review and it really helps to get future guests to come on the show, so we'd really appreciate that. Lastly, be sure to check out the show notes and follow us on all our social media channels, on Instagram, on LinkedIn, and on TikTok. Also, if interested, please sign up for our weekly newsletter from the Audit Podcast.
- [36:49]
B
Thank you all. Have a great one.