From the advent of personal travel-planning websites to pandemic closures, many travel companies hit an inflection point between 2015 and 2020. Many either chose to consolidate or fold altogether.
Wendy Burk, founder and CEO of Cadence Travel, did the opposite.
“When everyone was selling their businesses, Wendy laughed and said, ‘I’m just getting started,’” said Eitan Geft, chief of staff and Integrator™ for Cadence Travel. “She wanted to plan for the future and bring in new talent.”
Wendy’s foresight paid off. Revenue and profit doubled, and a team that started with around 30 people exploded to a headcount of 72 in just a few short years.
With all that rapid growth, it became clear that Cadence Travel needed a system to nurture its success.
Vision
In late 2019, Eitan started hearing about EOS® through networking groups and other business leaders he knew. After listening to the audio versions of several books in the Traction Library, Eitan said everything started to make sense.
Cadence Travel was just about to get started with the process when travel industries were hit hard again by the pandemic. The team had to shrink down to a skeleton crew and pause any further EOS discussions.
Fast-forward to 2022. As everyone emerged from the pandemic, Wendy doubled down again and prepared for growth. Cadence Travel rehired staff and added new faces quickly, experiencing the same level of growth as before.
But this time, Eitan said they had a head start by knowing where to look for help with structure. They decided to start interviewing prospective EOS Implementers®.
“EOS’s strength is in its simplicity,” he said. “You can read everything and think you can do this on your own. And we could have. But we knew we didn’t want to self-implement because we quickly saw that we couldn’t afford to try this on our own and fail.”
Traction
Initially, Eitan thought he was seeking the right EOS Implementer to help just him specifically.
“I thought it was the Integrator who ‘does’ EOS,” he said. “But now that I’m on that journey, I understand it’s really about the leadership team. And you need someone who can guide that team well. Because if you don’t have total buy-in from the whole team, then it will be rough.”
After deciding to bring on Certified EOS Implementer®, Victoria Cabot, the leadership team realized they didn’t have good answers to her important questions.
And that started with identifying the right structure for their organization.
Eitan said that creating The Accountability Chart™ was a significant step for them. He said it was enlightening to draw up the company framework without any names attached to roles or even holding assumptions about what roles there should be.
“We had an org chart, but it was of limited utility,” he said. “It was descriptive of what we were but disconnected from any ideal of structurally how we wanted to be.”
Phrased another way, before EOS, Eitan said they made decisions one case at a time but without an overarching framework and strategy.
“It was a little like building a house one room at a time,” he said. “The bigger things got, the more challenging it was to add on each new ‘room.’ It was also kind of exhausting.”
The leadership team got clear on the necessary structure for the business and made big adjustments. They knew they had to be willing to make difficult changes. Eitan said those first few months afterward were the hardest part of the transition.
Cadence Travel experienced more turnover than they’d been accustomed to having. Yet the leadership team knew those decisions would be necessary for the greater good of the organization in the long run.
“We’ve been very committed to the process,” he said. “We see how it makes us better and sets us up for the kind of future we want to have.”
Healthy
After nearly a year into Running on EOS™, Cadence Travel already sees how trusting the process can pay off. With 85 employees now, they’re a larger company than they’ve ever been.
More importantly, EOS helped nurture the clarity Cadence Travel’s leadership team needed to give their people more authority and room to grow. That started with getting very clear about roles and the metrics they used to define success in each seat on The Accountability Chart.
“If you don’t get clear on expectations, then everyone is going to have their own idea of what success means in a role, which was what had been happening before,” Eitan said.
By making expectations clear and empowering their people, things no longer needed to flow up to Eitan or Wendy for decisions.
“We’re really grateful to be on this journey,” Eitan said. “Everyone knows who we are as a company and where we’re going now. We speak the same language and agree on how to function as a leadership team and on the path forward. Running on EOS makes us better in every way.”
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