Book Review: Traction

Putting the Right People in the Right Roles

A cliché among companies is: “Our people are our greatest asset”—or some variation of that statement. Wickman takes a pragmatic, direct view of people in organizations. As he writes, you must surround yourself with good people. That starts and ends with their alignment with the organization’s values. No matter how talented people are, if their values are out of step with a company’s culture, the organization’s morale and performance suffer. Throughout his chapter on people, Wickman describes how getting the right person in the right position yields significant outcomes for a business.

Traction provides a straightforward framework for evaluating talent and their performance. Wickman’s five-by-five method begins with evaluating the frequency with which an employee demonstrates organizational values and the employee’s outcomes rather than evaluating employees by their achievements alone. This method recognizes that certain innate attributes—such as attitude and trustworthiness—ultimately lead to stronger teams and better outcomes. When organizations recognize this, teams can realize that good talent might be in the wrong position within the organization—rather than dismissing people who have strong values, but mediocre performance in a specific position. This approach gives flexibility and enables companies to retain and reassign talent.

Knowing the Numbers

Many fixate on the top-line numbers that leading organizations publicize. I recall, from my time at Eaton, when our then-CEO led five-year strategy meetings with top leaders, he would issue big growth goals. For an enterprise of that size, seeking aggressive growth typically meant growing by ten digits. While those were big goals, Sandy Cutler had great talent for breaking the numbers down. He demonstrated that, when each unit of the organization and each department in the unit took charge of their own goals and aligned on enterprise goals, these results were very achievable. This might seem simplistic, but it was during that time that I realized big numbers are really just a bunch of smaller numbers that a leader has added up.

Similarly, Wickman advises that all members of your organization should have a number. Not an employee number, but a metric they are responsible for optimizing, no matter what. It could be days outstanding for invoices, leads generated, or the duration of jobs. If every person in an organization knows their number and works to achieve that goal, all parts of the organization are working in harmony toward reaching their goals.

Holding Productive Meetings

I’m well known among my colleagues for absolutely hating meetings. It’s not that I dislike seeing my colleagues or working with other people. The trouble is that most meetings take too long, don’t have an agenda, don’t have an outcome, and are, frankly, unnecessary. There is nothing more demoralizing to talented, action-oriented professionals than having their energy sapped by having meetings during which they decide nothing and nobody knows what happened.

Most managers have trouble managing meetings effectively. We find ourselves chasing down—or making up—agenda items, for an agenda we must write down, for a meeting we think is necessary.

Perhaps the biggest thing I gained from Traction was its Level 10, or L10, meeting format. Using this format, you can keep meetings brief, with everyone’s attention focused on topics that move objectives forward. It employs a standard agenda that you can use not just in planning a meeting but also in running the meeting. In the organizations with which I’ve worked that use L10 meetings, things get done and everyone has a say.

Conclusion

Many of the concepts that Traction presents might seem familiar if you’ve worked in a highly process-oriented environment. To be fair, the book offers many other very useful lessons. But the biggest benefit that Traction delivers is to the firm that is trying to figure out its growth strategy.

Some firms try to develop their own operating systems. Toyota has the Toyota Production System, and when I was at Eaton, we had the Eaton Business System. Some smaller firms try to create their own operating systems, giving them names such as The A Company System or The Fanatical Client. Unless you are leading a sizable firm with the resources to properly invest in developing, documenting, training, and promoting a company-wide system, you are much better off adopting a proven system such as that of Traction.

Traction can become very jargon heavy. The organizations that embrace its methods frequently throw around references to L10s, VTOs, and Five-by-Fives. This jargon can obscure the value of the methods the book presents. Nonetheless, the methods are valuable.

If you are running a business and trying to figure out how to move your organization forward, do yourself, your employees, and your customers a favor: read Traction and apply its lessons.