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Traction

$14.49

This book provides the structure and system you need to run an efficient and effective business. Learn to set goals, schedule follow ups and stop stressing about what is next.

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Traction Book Summary

Gino walks you through bringing back into focus core values and marketing strategy. Some great structural tools which you can actually print out and fill out are provided to help you keep perspective.

Structure and Plan: Companies commonly envisage and devise short-term and long-term working plans. Traction throws clarity on what a company’s three-year plan should include and why. It will get you clear on the following:

• How to define what you want and where you want to be
• How to come together with your partners and colleagues to decide where you want to be
• How to arrive at the crux of your plan and strategy
• Define the tactics to adopt to get there
• Determine what reverse engineering can be done to improve, improvise and reach your target destination
• Create monthly, quarterly, half yearly, annual, three year and five year plans for your company
• Organizing the rocks to be accomplished and defining the issues that need to be tackled and overcome
• How to identify the unique capabilities of your associates, partners and employees and position them in the right slots within the company to extract their maximum potential

Along with prompting you on the right questions to ask to find this information, Traction also provides you with the right organizational tools needed to organize and document it all. Another book that assists in all of this with a goal of more independence rather than heavy active involvement is in the business is Ready Fire Aim.

Recharge Offsite: The book stresses the importance of company management and advisors going offsite for a long meeting or brainstorming session. Wickman insists that this should be offsite, away from emails and office calls for at least eight hours, every quarter. The intention is to focus and discuss your company outlook and vision. Some great examples of companies who have implemented and benefitted from this are given. For more success stories and helpful insights you might enjoy the book The Messy Middle, written by the founder of Behance.

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Company Pillars: This wonderful entrepreneur book is a study of common sense. Visionaries, Integrators and Operators are the people who carry the burden of the company on their shoulders.

Visionaries are the people who propel the company forward into the future using innovative and path breaking ideas and courage.

Integrators focus on the profitability and achievability of the various plans evolved, keeping a firm eye on the finances and operations of the company. This includes sales and marketing which generate business.

Operations and product managers oversee quality to ensure you provide best services and products and customers are satisfied. This Administration team looks after the overall running and infrastructure of the business. Finance takes care of the money flow, expense and budgeting.

These pillars play a vital role in helping to demarcate roles and responsibilities. Understanding what kind of person you are will allow you to appreciate your business partners or associates for their unique perspective. Another book to help you look at your business from a different perspective is Built To Sell.

The point of defining Visionaries, Integrators and Operators is the ability to tap into the capabilities of people by putting them in the roles best suited to them. Understand that it is perfectly fine if everyone is not involved in everything but have specific and specialized roles. The bottom line should be efficiency in what they do and not to cultivate a team of ‘Jack of all trades and master of none’, but rather fit the right people in seats perfect for them. There is a great deal of discussion about the value of generalists in the book Range.

Gaining Traction: Growth focused smaller companies need to address the problem of overcoming obstacles that hinder their progress live organization and focused goal setting before they devise marketing strategies even. They need traction to scale up. This book will help. Another book to mention is Building a Storybrand, which offers powerful marketing insights.

Traction has a great deal of focus on goal setting and we've compiled a list of 25 goal setting planners for outlining your goals and setting benchmarks.

Gino gives a great org chart from companies that took his tools and applied them. The best way to scale up is to work to your maximum capacity, then hire somebody to share the load and then again work till you hit maximum capacity and hire.

About The Author Gino Wickman