I read Traction by Gino Wickman on a flight home and instantly knew I wanted to implement it at BrightStar Care.
At the time, BrightStar Care had grown to approximately 250 locations mid-2013, and while we were scaling successfully, I was looking for structure. We were creating goals in leadership meetings, documenting strategies, having countless discussions—but I wasn’t confident that any of it was actually moving the company forward in a disciplined way. EOS seemed very straightforward, and more importantly, it promised accountability. I wanted to be sure that the goals we were spending time creating were actually being followed and pushing the company forward.
We brought on Don Tinney (Gino Wickman’s Integrator) as our EOS implementer, and he worked with us from that initial implementation all the way until the day I sold a majority stake in the company [nearly 12 years later].
Why EOS Resonated
What struck me about Traction was its simplicity and practicality. As a Founder who had built BrightStar Care from the ground up, I had strong instincts about where we needed to go, but translating vision into execution across a growing franchise system was getting harder. EOS offered a common language and operating system that could work across our corporate team and eventually influence how our franchisees ran their businesses too.
The promise wasn’t sexy—it was structure, discipline, and accountability. But that’s exactly what we needed.
The Four Tools That Transformed How We Operated
1. The Vision/Traction Organizer (V/TO)
The V/TO became our single source of truth. Everyone on the leadership team could point to the same document and know where we were headed, what our priorities were, how we would differentiate ourselves in the market and in our culture (core values), and what success looked like.
The Power of Two Pages
One of the most transformative aspects of the VTO was its ability to condense everything—brand differentiation, core values, long-term vision, and short-term goals—into just two pages. This made it incredibly easy to keep everyone informed and aligned without overwhelming them with documentation they’d never actually reference.
Page 2 became our strategic command center. The far-left column displayed our full-year goals, the middle column held that quarter’s Rocks, and the far-right column listed open issues to tackle in upcoming quarterly meetings. This layout wasn’t just visually clean—it created a powerful planning rhythm. In Q2, Q3, and Q4, we’d look at the left side (annual goals) and the right side (emerging issues) to inform the next quarter’s Rocks in the middle column. It turned our quarterly planning sessions from starting with a blank slate into strategic conversations grounded in both our big-picture vision and real-time challenges.
2. The Accountability Chart
Moving from a traditional org chart to an Accountability Chart was eye-opening. It forced us to think about strategy first—defining the structure we needed to implement our long-term vision through seats and roles, not just accommodating people and titles.
Strategy Informs Structure, Structure Informs People
The discipline that changed everything started with the roles we needed—completely detached from names. We’d define each seat and think through how we’d measure performance before putting anyone’s name in the box.
This is where most small and Founder-run organizations get stuck: moving loyal people around different boxes without stopping to think about strategy. But the Accountability Chart forced us to flip that sequence. Strategy informs structure. Structure informs people. Only after we clearly defined what each seat required could we honestly assess whether we had someone with the right skills—or if we needed to make a change.
Three Metrics, Maximum Clarity
The most transformative exercise was limiting each role to three quantitative or objective qualitative measurements. For example, a Chief Growth Officer should own leads generated, conversion rates, and improvements in customer lifetime value. No ambiguity. No subjective debates. The numbers told the story.
This constraint gave us concrete data for performance reviews and eliminated the tendency to make everyone responsible for everything (which really means no one is responsible for anything).
3. Level 10 Meetings
Before EOS, our leadership meetings could meander. We’d discuss important things, but we didn’t always solve them. The Level 10 meeting format transformed how we tackled issues.
Crisp, Efficient, and On Time
The power of Level 10s is the preset agenda that keeps everything moving. Certain items get headlines, not discussion: scorecard reviews, rock updates, and customer and employee news. This discipline protects the most valuable part of the meeting: the IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) section, where we prioritize and solve problems that will have the greatest positive impact on the organization if addressed now.
I’m sure many Founders know the pain of meetings that run late and drag on, sending the rest of your day into a tailspin. Level 10 meetings start on time and end on time. Period. It became the most important meeting of the week—the one that kept the entire leadership team aligned.
We ended every meeting by rating it on a scale of 1-10, which created immediate accountability for how well we used our time. If someone rated it a 6, we’d ask why and fix it for next week.
4. The People Analyzer
The People Analyzer provided an objective framework for evaluating whether people were a good fit. It wasn’t just about performance—it was about alignment with our core values and whether someone truly “got it, wanted it, and had the capacity” (GWC) for their role.
Quarterly Truth-Telling
The combination of quarterly People Analyzer reviews—with dedicated quiet time to openly and honestly evaluate each member of my senior leadership team—and patterns from Level 10 meetings became incredibly revealing. When certain team members committed to solving an issue by a specific date but missed it multiple times, it highlighted that some people had reached their plateau. They weren’t continuing to make progress on their contributions in line with the business’s needs.
These were often great people who helped us reach a milestone, but they weren’t going to help us reach the next stage of growth. The People Analyzer gave us the framework to see that clearly, instead of making excuses for them.
Clear Signals for Action
Working with Don Tinney (our EOS implementor), we learned the clear indicators that you need to coach someone up—and when coaching isn’t going to work:
- 2 minuses on core values: If someone isn’t living your values in multiple areas, they’re not your person
- Any “no” on GWC: Get it (understand the role), Want it (desire to do it), Capacity to do it (time, skills, mental/emotional capability)—all three have to be yes
- 3 or more +/- score: They need to improve to a + on at least one of those areas
If you have minuses or no’s, you either coach them up immediately or you have a clear sign that you need to make a change. The People Analyzer removed the ambiguity and the guilt from those decisions.
Connecting People Analyzer to Compensation
We also used the ratio of + versus +/- in annual performance reviews and merit increase allocation. We budgeted 3-4% across all employees who had been with us for the full year, but that didn’t mean everyone got the same increase. If we were planning to allocate 3-4% across all employees who were employed for the full year, high performers with strong + ratings received 5-7+%, which meant those with more +/- may have only received 0-2%. The People Analyzer provided an objective framework for identifying and rewarding the right people.
The Results
Working with Don Tinney and implementing EOS helped us scale BrightStar Care to over 400 locations.
More than the numbers, EOS created a culture of accountability and execution. Our leadership team operated as a true team, not just a collection of functional heads. We had a common language, we solved problems faster, and we knew—every single week—whether we were on track or off track.
And for franchisors, the true value of moving BrightStar Care to new levels of success at the unit level was achieved by creating franchisee versions of each key EOS tool and rolling them out to our network. I brought Gino Wickman to our annual franchisee conferences 3 years in a row – 2013, 2014, and 2015 and rolled out the process and its tools, and then focused on helping the franchisees be better managers and leaders, leveraging the principles and tools from EOS. The franchisee version of the L10 was 60 minutes instead of 90 minutes; the long-term view was 5 years, not 10 years; and the key roles for the accountability chart and their related measures were defined, along with the recommended positions to add at different revenue stages.
What I’d Tell Other Founders
EOS isn’t magic, and it’s not complicated. That’s actually its power. It’s a simple, disciplined operating system that forces you to get clear on where you’re going and who’s responsible for getting you there.
If you’re a Founder who’s great at vision but struggling with execution, or if you’re scaling and feeling like things are slipping through the cracks, EOS gives you the structure to turn strategy into results, and it may highlight the need for you to be the CEO/Visionary and to hire a President/COO as your Integrator.
The key is committing to it fully. We ran Level 10 meetings every single week. We reviewed our rocks every quarter. We used the tools consistently, and that consistency compounded over time.
I worked with Don Tinney as our Implementer until the day I sold a majority stake in BrightStar Care, and I can say with certainty: EOS was one of the best operational decisions I made as a Founder.
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