If you have spent much time with me, you will know that I love to create things, but I’m not too artistic.  I have this mental picture of what I want to draw, but when it comes to creating that picture with a brush, pen, or Apple Pencil, what actually is formed is very different from what I see in my mind.

When I started thinking about getting chickens, I knew I needed a chicken coop. I was advised not to purchase a coop as they tend not to hold up.  So, during the pandemic shutdown, I realized it was time to build my coop.  The rest of the details that would take us from building a coop to actually getting farm-fresh eggs were a bit fuzzy to me (my husband would probably say they were very fuzzy).  But I didn’t care, I was ready to start that journey.

The reality is that it took me a lot longer than I expected to reach a point where I had the whole Chicken Mama thing figured out.  It seemed like a constant learning process, starting with the fact that chickens can fly (hence the phrase “the chickens flew the coop”).  For the first year or so, I never knew what to expect when I went to the coop, but I knew it wasn’t going to be predictable.

Over time, my husband and I began to come to agreement on what we were trying to achieve.  Yes, the initial goal was to have farm-fresh eggs, but, ultimately, we realized we had a real opportunity to use our property for more than an egg-making adventure.  We agreed to stick to animals that can fly, including fryers (chickens you can eat) and turkeys. And just recently he added the idea of ducks?!?

So we know where we are going long-term, but we need a pathway to get there.  And that is where drawing comes in.  What should Marlee Acres look like three years from now on our way to achieving our 10-year target? We need additional coops for the different chickens and turkeys, we need the skills to kill and prep our birds, we need the time to focus on all these birds and, ideally, we will have dogs that won’t chase and kill our chickens.  In other words, my picture needs to be a bit less fuzzy and much more crystal clear.

This is the same process I take my clients through as we develop their three-year picture.  I like to ask them, Are you ready to start drawing? Then we go to work creating a picture of what their organization will look like on the way to achieving their 10-year target.  This is where we get specific about what they will achieve in the next three years.

Drawing this picture is beneficial because if everyone on the leadership team can see the same thing, the chances of achieving it are so much greater.

During this exercise, I encourage the team to consider all aspects of the business, including their role, the size of the organization, the work being done, the locations and their reputation in the marketplace.

With one of my clients, after we drew the picture, I asked if everyone could see it, and someone said, “No, some parts are still fuzzy.”  The leadership team kept working on their drawing until they could all see it and were excited to be a part of it.

This isn’t an exercise in which you want to just go along to get along with everyone on the leadership team.  If everyone on your team can’t answer “Heck Yes” to the question “Can you see it?” we haven’t done our best work.

When you nail it, the excitement in the room is amazing! And people are excited to get to work achieving the picture you’ve drawn.

If you look at your three-year picture and can’t say “Heck Yes” – email me.  I might not be much of an artist, but I can help you and your leadership team draw an exciting, compelling picture of the future of your company.

Where will we be 10 years from now?, I asked my husband.  It’s a question we discuss frequently.  We are no longer spring chickens (well, I still think I am), and defining what is important in life seems to be a consistent theme in our discussions of the future.

But I also know myself, and the status quo is not something I feel compelled to accept.  So the question I keep asking is, “What’s next?”  Now that we are clear on our core focus – sticking to animals that fly – it is time to focus on where we are going long-term.

We recently inherited three new chickens and a totally awesome coop built by a professional structural engineer.  Those chickens are so sweet – they were clearly raised by a devoted chicken mama and are comfortable around humans and dogs.  Last week, one of them actually took some food right out of my hand – something my chickens would never do.  And the little sounds they make when I walk up to them are absolutely adorable.

The acquisition of the new coop has allowed us to move the timeline for fryers and turkeys forward, but that still doesn’t answer the question of where we are going long-term.

As we talk through this, we get excited about what the possibilities could be for our property.  Fresh eggs, homegrown chickens in the freezer, serving farm-raised turkey at Thanksgiving.  And that’s how we arrived at our 10-year target: “The Best Place for Chickens to Flock West of the Mississippi.”  Oh, man, I can’t wait to have T-shirts made up.

The 10-year target (a key component of the vision of your organization) is the one, long-range, overarching, energizing goal that everyone in your company is working toward.  It doesn’t have to be 10 years – it could be 5 or 30 years, but regardless of timeframe, it’s critical that this target involves everyone and is energizing.

In Ben Hardy’s most recent book, “10x Is Easier than 2x,” he writes that when you expand your mind to encompass what you could actually achieve if you dream big, you can’t then shrink the mind back down to its original state.  He argues that shifting your mindset to make the biggest imaginable changes is easier than making incremental improvements to achieve 2x results.  And this mindset shift allows you (or your team) to reach beyond what is currently in front of you.

In a recent EOS session with a new client, we started to talk through the 10-year target.  I shared some examples from other EOS clients, including some inspiring targets from my own clients. The response from my new client was, “Wow, I need to think bigger and beyond myself. My goal for this business isn’t nearly large enough.”

In talking about the 10-year target with another client, the owner said, “I want to be a $1 billion company!”  And the CFO asked, “Why? You don’t even care about money.”  The owner’s response was that he wanted “unlimited resources to build cool s**t.”  The team loved that idea, and so does the rest of the company.

So, when you think about where you want your business to be 10 years from now, what comes to mind?  Are you thinking beyond making money? Are you focusing on the impact your business could have in your industry?  In your community?  On your employees and their families?

I want to encourage you to dream big!  Even if you fall a little short of your 10-year target, you will be so much closer to what you really want than you would if you just focused on incremental improvement.  Need help clarifying your long-term target? Send me an email – I can help you achieve what you really want from your business.

Almost every day when I drive down my driveway past the neighbor’s pasture, I see their goat with the floppy ears hanging out with the horses. Sometimes he is perched on top of the wood stand, and sometimes he is lying on top of the horse, his legs dangling down on each side. It absolutely cracks me up every time I see it. I hear goats are pretty easy to take care of, so why not get one? I mean, they eat blackberry bushes, and we have plenty of those. And now that we can manage our chickens, why not try out some other farm animals?

My husband has also decided we should raise a lamb. (I just found out a lamb is a baby sheep. I know, I know, I didn’t learn my farm animals when I was younger.) But then, why stop at a lamb? Maybe we should get a cow? I mean, if we are going to go in, let’s go all in.

At some point along this line of thought, a voice of reasons calls out, “What are you thinking?” Chickens are relatively easy to care for, and it took me nearly 3 years to figure it out. And do we really want to spend all our time caring for animals that, in the end, we will probably eat? Well, except for the goat with the floppy ears. I could never eat him, he is too cute.

The fact is, for a while there, my husband and I were chasing shiny edible objects. Until I realized what we were doing. Learning how to raise chickens for eggs does not translate to raising larger animals for food.

That’s when we had to come to an agreement regarding what we wanted to focus our attention on. And I’ll be honest, it was hard for us to agree. Mike, a Midwesterner who grew up on meat and potatoes, thinks we should use our property to raise animals to eat. Julie, a city girl who just recently started living in the country, is very proud of her ability to pick up a chicken with her bare hands.

For now, we have agreed to stick with animals that fly. We currently have lay hens, and in the future we will likely get fryers and turkeys. It is something that we both agree we can focus on and succeed at in the short-term while leaving time for our other interests, including hiking and traveling.

I often see this type of struggle from my clients. They lack clarity around what the true focus of the business should be. It’s easy to want to do too many things at once. When my clients start building their vision, I tell them that nailing the core focus will take somewhere between 45 minutes and 2 years. If the team can’t agree on the core focus of the business, they will start (or continue) chasing shiny objects, possibly even cute goats with floppy ears.

An organization’s core focus is its sweet spot. It is where the purpose meets the niche. Or where the “why” intersects the “what.”

If you take a step back and look at your business, have you ever wondered why some of the work you do is so easy and some of it is so hard? When you are operating in your sweet spot, everything just seems to flow. The hard work doesn’t seem as hard, and the output is top-notch.

One of my clients went through a tremendous growth spurt, and business was great – until it wasn’t. All of a sudden, projects weren’t finishing profitably, customers were unhappy, and it seemed just so hard. When the team finally took the time to slow down and think about why some projects were going great, and others were not, they realized the easier work was right in their wheelhouse. They realized they had a choice to make: continue to grow, knowing that some of their projects would be outside their sweet spot and therefore harder and less profitable, or start turning down that kind of work and focusing on what they truly enjoyed and were really good at.

Nearly every one of my clients has had to decide if they want growth for the sake of growth. Not everyone realizes it’s a lot harder to run a $40 million company with 10% profits than a $20 million dollar company with 20% profits. So, what kind of company do you want? Will the leadership team say no to accepting work that falls outside their sweet spot? Doing this requires an abundance mindset, as well as trust that if you do great work, more will follow.

As you look at your company, what do you see? Are you crystal clear on your sweet spot? Or are you chasing shiny objects because you can’t say no and you think you need the revenue? Answer that question honestly, and if you don’t like the answer, email me. I can help you and your team gain clarity around your core focus.

When I walk up to the chicken coop, my rooster, Sven, makes a certain sound. It is his way of notifying the flock to “pay attention.” This isn’t a special “Sven” sound as my other roosters would do the same thing. He also makes a sound I call “Happy Chicken.” When I go into the run and leave treats for the flock, Sven will make this excited clucking that sounds like he is really pleased with what I brought them. That sound always makes me smile.

But I noticed something funny a few weeks ago. I had just dropped some treats in the run, and Sven seemed happy about it, but then he waddled over to the corner of the run and started making his ”happy chicken” sound – and he was nowhere near the treats I had just dropped. He then picked up a worm and proceeded to drop it in front of the nearest hen for her to eat. In case you don’t know, chickens love to eat worms. Sometimes, I’ll grab worms from the garden and take them to the chickens. Anyway, as I watched this exchange, I realized, Sven isn’t excited about my treats, he just makes that sound to get the attention of the hens so he can give them a treat.

Since the worm exchange, I’ve noticed him make the sound, wait until a hen comes to him, then drop some food for her. In fact, I’ve watched him strut his stuff all over that run sharing the treats with all the hens.

And that is when I realized how much of regular chicken life I missed observing because of the aggressiveness of my former rooster, Oden. When Oden was alive, he was so aggressive that I never had an opportunity to pause and watch the chickens and how they interact. I was forced to keep my eyes on him, lest he find me not paying attention and try to flog me.

As I reflect on the current state of my chickens, I’m pleased with the traction that I’ve been able to make toward becoming the chicken mama I always hoped I could become.

I’m sure many business owners have similar realizations. When you focus on the right things, you find that all the hard work, all the hard decisions, all the time you put in begins to pay off. And that is what the Traction component of EOS is all about. It means making progress toward the company that you know you are capable of becoming. This progress can seem so minuscule and, at times, daunting, but focusing on the right things day in and day out will allow you to achieve what you want to achieve.

In EOS, the tools that strengthen the Traction component are rocks and a good meeting pulse. Rocks are just 90-day business priorities. And by setting the right rocks and staying focused on completing those rocks, you will make progress toward your goals. Choosing the right priorities can be difficult as we sometimes think we have to get everything done in one quarter. With that mindset, not much will be completed. But having the discipline to focus on only the top priorities and make time to get them done will propel the business further and faster than making a little progress on too many priorities.

The other key to the Traction component is a good meeting pulse. That means that as a leadership team, you are coming together on a weekly basis to solve the most important issues facing the business. And by solve, I mean addressing them at the root so they go away forever.

One of my clients is a small but growing professional services company. They were self-implementing but wanted to really master the EOS tools and asked me for help. In their most recent planning session, the team was laser-focused on setting rocks to address issues that were preventing the company from growing. During our mid-session check-in, the visionary shared, “We are having a weird experience. Rocks 100% on track and two meetings where we solved all of the issues on the issues list …. It’s awesome. And the best part is that I really thought some of those rocks weren’t quite attainable.”

If you feel like you aren’t gaining traction in your business, I’d challenge you to get crystal clear on the 3-7 most important priorities for the upcoming quarter. Then use your weekly meetings to resolve issues that are keeping you from completing them. If everyone on your leadership team, or even better everyone in your company, can do that, imagine the traction you could achieve.

Not confident you are gaining the traction you want or need? Send me an email and I can help you and your team get moving in the right direction.

The decision to get chickens was totally mine. I’d been thinking about it for a while, and then in March 2020, when the world shut down, I realized I finally had time to start building my chicken coop. My husband was a good sport and supported me during the process, including allowing me to take over the garage while building the coop, assembling and leading the transport crew (it took four men to lift the coop into a trailer and move it to its final destination) and leveling the coop. Once I realized I would need some sort of fence to protect the chickens, he made multiple trips to Portland to pick up a dog run that I found on Craig’s List. And he spent a lot of energy digging below grade to ensure that no rodents could dig under the fence and get to our chickens.

Even with all that help, he still viewed this as my undertaking. It was my responsibility to manage the day-to-day aspects of having chickens. It turned out that raising chickens has a bit of a steep learning curve, and multiple times he suggested we should just get rid of the chickens and go back to buying eggs at the store.

About six months into my quest to become a chicken mama, JacX killed our first chicken. I wrote about it in this article. To briefly summarize, we had a hen outside of our coop. I thought it was one of my free-range hens coming back because she heard the call of our newly adopted rooster. It wasn’t. Instead, it was one of the hens that had somehow escaped from the coop/run. JacX was in full retriever mode and chased that chicken down and brought her back to her dad.

Both Mike and I were very distraught as we watched this whole chase unfold. But it was at that moment that I realized my husband and I had very different ideas about how to handle a dead chicken.

I’ll never forget Mike’s reaction. He was holding the dead chicken, head down, and started walking back to the house. I asked him where he was going and he said he was going to make chicken dinner. I was appalled! I exclaimed, “We Don’t Eat Our Chickens!” He looked shocked. It was a chicken, freshly killed, and the right thing to do would be to eat it.

We still don’t agree on this point. But he has respected my wishes (at least I think he has) and has not eaten any of our chickens. Instead, he realized that if we’re going to go to all this effort to feed these chickens, perhaps he should raise some fryers.

Once he got this idea in his head and we had a shared vision, he became more involved in caring for the chickens. This has made the whole experience more enjoyable, especially with his great ideas on how to improve their living quarters and their overall enjoyment.

As often happens, this Chicken Mama moment sparked a realization about the wider world. When I reflect on my EOS clients, the most common reason they cite for wanting to start implementing EOS is that they don’t believe everyone in their organization is on the same page. The owner, president, or CEO feels that the leadership team is moving in slightly different directions (some more than others), and this is keeping them from achieving what they know they are capable of achieving.

Having a shared vision means that everyone sees the vision and rows together toward that vision. When the leadership team establishes a three-year picture of what the organization looks like, the intent is to create a vision that not only the entire leadership team but all the employees see and share.

Recently, I was in session with a client, and two owners started to talk about their revenue target. They both had similar revenue numbers in mind, but as they started to talk through it, they realized that they were talking about two very different targets: one was recurring and the other was total. Instead of saying, “We are close enough,” they kept discussing until they were completely on the same page. Why did that matter? Because if they were aiming for different revenue targets (or types of revenue), the vision would be different, and ultimately their decision making would be different.

Take a look at your organization. Do you see everyone moving together toward a shared vision? Or do you see people kinda going along to get along? Some leaders have a vision and pull everyone else along to achieve that vision. Yes, that can be done. But, from an outside perspective, that seems exhausting. Wouldn’t it be more fun to have every one of your employees working alongside you to achieve that vision?

One of the frustrations that business owners often experience is that no one in the organization seems to want it as much as they do. But how can someone want something they can’t see? As a leader, have you clearly communicated your vision for the organization and allowed your employees to ask questions and even challenge that vision? This may be a little scary, but those questions and challenges can help define or refine that vision into something everyone wants to achieve.

If you are exhausted from trying to pull your employees along toward achieving your vision, slow down and give me a call. I promise you there is a better way.