Your growth checklist for 2025 – how did you score?

This year, I received the greatest gift in the world. I got to fly and build a plane mid-flight. As a business and leadership coach, I got to experience life on both sides of the equation. I got to elevate myself above the business and see the good, bad and ugly: The Crests, Cracks and the Chasms.

Here are my top 10 learnings (which I’ll explain in both EOS Worldwide and Muggle terms.)

(Plus there’s a challenge for you right at the end…but only for the brave…and fortune does favor the brave, but sadly courage is not always present amongst so many of us.)

1. Core Values are your heart and soul, but setting them is as important as anything. Remember, they are discovered, not created. Beware Lencioni’s Value Trap (accidental, aspirational, permission to play). When you live, breathe and revisit your Core Values on a regular basis, political agendas will be smoked out and “Wrong People” will be exposed. Are you hiring and firing on Core Values, as opposed to personality, ego and politics?
2. Your Core Focus is like a Cold Plunge. It’s a reminder of your purpose + niche that keeps you from being distracted and veering off course. Put differently: if you change your vision as often as you change your underwear, you’re suffer from corporate ADHD aka Squirrel! If you were to go around the room (starting with your Leadership Team) and ask each of them to recite your WHY (Passion, Cause, Purpose) and your WHAT (Niche), how many DIFFERENT answers would you get?
3. Everything begins and ends with the Accountability Chart – Structure first, People second; 6-12 months out. Lose titles and lose org charts. Focus on accountability. GWC(Gets It, Wants It, Capacity to do It) is your tool of choice to determine if people are in the right seat, but I’ll also give you another acronym, DEI. A Leadership Team should mirror the customers it serves. Like musical chairs, if there are fewer seats than people, someone has to leave the Leadership Team.
4. Gino Wickman was right. A strong leadership team is the single-biggest determinant of success. Period. Like good parents, are you a united front? Behind closed doors and especiallyin front of the children? If you behave badly, you give your children permission to model your bad behavior.
5. Virtual, hybrid and remote working is hard. Leadership teams should meet in person and as a group, at a minimum once a quarter, if not once a month (if not spread out too far geographically.)
6. Vulnerability-based trust is truly the foundation of building a functional company. When what you say can and will be used against you, a dysfunctional “chain reaction” occurs that may produce results, but almost always will come with short term pain and a long term cost.
7. If you aren’t consistently rating your meetings a 10/10 or close to it, you’re wasting everyone’s time, including your own. The L10 meeting is simply the most advanced and effective meeting structure on the planet. There never has been and there never will be a better one. Also, if you’re on the Leadership Team, the MAXIMUM number of meetings you should be having every week is TWO(2).
8. A weekly scorecardis absolutely critical, but with it must come accountability. Many people question a weekly measurable as opposed to a monthly one, but the art is not in the measurables themselves, but rather the act of checking in on business and financial performance on a regular (weekly) basis.
9. There’s no place for fear in an organization. Safety does not mean comfort or complacency. It means that people can be open and honest, enter the danger, and engage in healthy conflict, all for the greater good of the organization. My direct report said this to me (really touching), “I wasn’t afraid when I came to work every day; I wasn’t afraid with you as my boss!“
10. S.M.A.R.T. Rocks are one of the clearest ways to both simplify and prioritize your quarterly (90-day) priorities. This is the Goldilocks time frame. Anything more or less frequent is sub-optimal. The 90-day world is part of your company’s EKG that keeps everyone aligned, on the same page, motivated, focused and most importantly, manages, maximizes and replenishes your most prized asset, your human energy.

Bonus Insight: It’s all about people. Let me repeat: it’s all about people. It always was. It always will be. To requote Patrick Lencioni in 5 Dysfunctions: “Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.”

Challenge: Open and honest – how did you score? How does your organization score out of 10. Are you prepared to share your score in the comments section? Or perhaps you feel more comfortable to DM me? Most importantly, are you being honest with yourself?

I’m here to tell you that IF you are at 80% or better, you WILL achieve your business and financial goals. That’s not MAY; it’s WILL.

If you are a small or medium sized company and you’re experiencing “growing pains” (what we call hitting the ceiling), give me a shout. Let’s have a conversation.

EOS is a proven system on track to help 1,000,000 companies get what they want by 2030. Add a coach to the mix and you’re in an even better position to win. Check it out. It just might change your life and help you get a life. Or get your life back.