We are currently in the middle of a chaotic product launch and our leadership team is working eighty hours a week just to keep the lights on. Should we wait until this current storm passes before scheduling our first Focus Day with you, or will starting now help us survive it?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If you are in the middle of a chaotic product launch and working eighty hour weeks, you are not ready for EOS®. Trying to implement a highly disciplined operating system while your house is actively on fire is a waste of your money and my time. You must have a basic level of operational stability before we can build a long term program. If your leadership team is completely consumed by daily firefighting, you lack the mental capacity to engage in strategic thinking. In the language of cognitive workloads, you have zero white space. To make our sessions effective, you need the ability to step back, reflect, and make decisions without the distraction of an active crisis. My recommendation is to execute your product launch first. Stabilize the immediate crisis and protect your core business operations. Once you can carve out one full day a quarter for your leadership team to step away from the business without it collapsing, that is when you call me. We will use that window to transition your team from reactive crisis managers into proactive policy makers. This transition requires a commitment to a new way of behaving, which is impossible to establish when you are physically and mentally exhausted from eighty hour weeks. Let the storm pass, stabilize your core, and then we will build the structure to ensure you never have to run your business in crisis mode again.