“Be and Do” – the Simplest Message for your Employees

Keep it simple.

The first leadership ability I teach my EOS leadership teams is to simplify. As companies grow, complexity increases. Most of the time, it’s inherent: more people mean more lines of communication and more work means more processes to follow. Sometimes, it’s self-inflicted: I see people using ‘flowery’ words to sound interesting or smart and the message gets lost.

I’m always looking for examples of simplification. Since my son goes to NC State University and I love the Hunt Library, I spend a lot of time on campus. Seeing the new branding campaign “Think and Do” – it hit me: to “Be and Do” is what we ask of our employees at the simplest level.

Be and Do

When it comes down to it, you simply expect your employees to Be a certain way and to Do certain things…

A strong EOS People component of your business means you have the Right People in the Right Seats.

A Right Person is someone who shares your Core Values. These are the three to seven personality traits that define the culture of your organization. Your Core Values answer the questions: “What kind of company are we?” – “How do we behave?” – “What kind of people work here?”. Think of your three best employees. Why did you name those particular people? The answers are how you begin to ‘discover’ your true Core Values.

Once you’ve established your Core Values, you can point to them and tell your employees: “I expect you to Be like that.” You can even tell prospective employees during the interview process that you expect them to Be like that.

When someone is in the Right Seat, it means they Get It, they Want It, and they have the Capacity to Do It. (By ‘It’, we mean the job.) We define the job by identifying the top five Roles of the job – the top five things you expect them to Do.

Be This Way and Do These Things

So that’s it! We want to have the Right People in the Right Seats and we can make that happen by being clear about how we want people to Be and exactly what we expect them to Do.

Bonus: The Evidence

When you tell an employee what you expect them to do, you need clear, objective evidence to tell how well they are doing the job. Companies running on EOS have a Scorecard. The Scorecard is made up of the Measurables we use to tell if someone is doing a job well. Ideally, everyone in the company has one or two numbers (or other objective measurements) that provide clear evidence of a job done well.