If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably heard of a business operating system. It’s a framework and set of practices a business implements to make their operations more streamlined and consistent. There are many business operating systems out in the world, and a lot of information about which would benefit a business like yours.
But the main question you’re probably asking about building a business operating system — is it really worth it?
Why you should implement a BOS
You may be considering a BOS implementation for a variety of reasons — to reclaim time in your day, to cut down on chaos at work, or to optimize your operations for better growth. We’ve seen that whatever your starting point, the business impact of implementing a BOS framework is huge.
Our founding partners give a lot of credit to the framework they implemented at BrightGauge, their previous company (EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System). After implementing a framework, BrightGauge operations got a lot smoother, and they were able to sell the company for a nice price when they were ready to exit. That real-world success — building, scaling, and successfully exiting using a business operating system — is why we know this stuff works.
Here’s the reality: research shows that 50% of business system implementations fail on their first attempt, and most projects exceed their budgets by three to four times. But when organizations get expert guidance or use the right tools, success rates jump to 85%. The difference between success and failure often comes down to having a clear implementation path and the right support.
And our customers have found that BOS implementation has huge business impacts. Ian Groves at Start Tech had this to say about implementing EOS®, one of the most popular business operating systems out there:
“The impact has been enormous. We’ve tripled our revenue and doubled the size of our team in the past five years — astronomical growth compared to the first nineteen years of the business. And that’s mainly because of the framework we’ve implemented.”
According to recent industry data, 30% of organizations implement business operating systems primarily for better operations management, and 20% do it to support growth. With digital transformation investments expected to reach $3.4 trillion by 2026, systematizing how your business operates has moved from “nice to have” to essential for staying competitive.
If you’re thinking about implementing a business operating system, you probably already know it can help. We’re here to tell you that for us and for many other business operators like us, it has helped immeasurably.
How to implement a business operating system: BOS management basics
Once you decide to implement, the biggest hurdle is getting started. It can feel overwhelming and like you’ll have to turn your whole business upside down at once. Not so! You can (and should) chip away at your implementation in a way that works for you and your team. We recommend getting one piece or tool locked in, then moving on to the others.
A note on coaches and implementers
A lot of people really benefit from having a coach or guide help them implement their new framework. It can be invaluable to have an objective, outside perspective on how your business is really doing, and the things you should prioritize to move the needle.
EOS Worldwide trains awesome EOS Implementers who are located globally. If you want an objective, expert guide to make your EOS implementation a bit smoother, you can find an EOS implementer in your area here.
Pinnacle Business Guides work within another business operating system and also provide invaluable support to help their clients grow. You can learn more about Pinnacle Business Guides here.
Whether your business is investing in a coach or not, read on to get an overview of the steps involved in implementing a new business framework. The more information you have, the better decision you’ll make about what’s best for your team.
Step 1: Start with meetings
Pretty much every business operating system out there, including EOS® and Pinnacle, have meetings as a front-and-center tool of their business operating system. If you’ve ever been a part of a company with a mediocre or bad meeting culture, it’s easy to see why. Bad meetings are time-consuming, demoralizing, and prone to confusion. Plus, they take you away from what you consider your “real work.”
We like to suggest starting with meetings as a jumping-in point for implementing a business operating system because it gives you a quick win (better meetings) and leads naturally to your other tools, setting you up for long-term success.
Every good business operating system has a meeting agenda that will help you keep on track and integrate your other BOS tools into your workflow. The classic EOS meeting is called a Level 10 Meeting™ (aka the L10), and it’s one of our favorite tools. It’s called the L10 for the ranking you give out of ten at the end of each meeting. You might not be used to ranking your meetings, but it turns out to be super helpful.
Here’s an example of an L10 meeting agenda in Strety:
Let’s break this down:
Segue: where we check in attendees and answer a quick question. Usually, we talk about how our week was personally and professionally. This helps everyone drop in to the meeting and connect with each other.
Scorecards: where each of us checks in about any metrics we’re tracking. If any metrics merit discussion, we create an Issue to discuss it in that section of the meeting.
Rocks: where we check in about our bigger goals. For our team, this is often either a large project or a numerical goal for the quarter, like signing X many new customers this quarter. Again, if any of the rocks need further discussion, we create an Issue of it.
Headlines: where we check in about company news. This is where we usually share things like upcoming time off, quick updates about how a conference went, or any other news that our team needs to share.
To Dos: where we check in about tasks that the team has on deck, making sure everything’s on track.
Issues: the “meat and potatoes” of our meetings. This is where we do our best problem-solving. We talk about what exactly the issue is, uncover the root cause of the issue, discuss how we can solve it, and create a resolution and next steps, usually in the form of To Dos to guide us exactly where to go next.
Conclusion: We wrap up the meeting, confirm our next steps and To Dos, and rate the meeting. We rate and leave feedback on our meetings so we can hold each other accountable and aim for ever-better meetings.
When you first start out and don’t have the whole suite of BOS tools implemented, you could use the headlines section to share the news you’d normally share in a weekly meeting, and the issues section to discuss any blockers. Just getting into the rhythm of a consistent meeting with time limits and priorities on each section will help you move faster. Plus, once you start using a meeting agenda like this, it’ll naturally encourage the development of your other BOS tools, starting with issues.
For a complete walkthrough of setting up your first L10 meetings, check out our complete guide to Level 10 Meetings.
Step 2: Issues (Your problem-solving engine)
Issues, topics, blockers… whatever you want to call them — these are the heart of your business operating system’s problem-solving capabilities. Sometimes an issue is created from one of your other tools. For example, creating an issue out of a missed goal. Sometimes the issue has a different source, like a customer request.
Wherever the issue comes from (and whatever you call it), your business operating system will call for you to clarify the issue and its root cause, then solve it. In EOS, this is called the Issue Solving Track™.
It might take a little practice, but once you get into the swing of resolving issues, we’re sure you and your team will love it. Instead of problems festering in the dark, or getting pushed off to another time, they get faced head-on. It’s exhilarating.
In Strety, issues flow naturally from your meetings, rocks, and scorecards into one Issues List where you can track and resolve them systematically. This connection between all your BOS tools is what makes the system work — everything feeds into everything else.
Step 3: Layer in scorecards and rocks
Once you have your meetings and issues rolling, we recommend adding in two other tools — scorecards (aka measureables, KPIs, or scoreboards) and Rocks (aka goals, OKRs, projects). These can be similar, so let’s break down the differences.
Understanding the difference between Scorecards and Rocks
Scorecards are the numbers you use for a weekly check-in. For example, an outbound salesperson could have a scorecard with the number of dials they made that week. This number should serve as a baseline for asking yourself (and each other) whether you accomplished what you needed to last week.
Rocks can be a couple different things:
Numerical Rocks are big quarterly numbers that tie into a team’s larger goals. For example, the same outbound sales rep may have a larger goal of booking 100 demos in a quarter. This is elevated to a rock versus being laid out as a weekly scorecard because it ties into other team or company goals and is part of a larger plan.
Project or status-based Rocks are a way to track big projects that will take more than a few weeks, and involve multiple stakeholders. Maybe you want to grow your sales team, and you want your best outbound sales rep to help, so you assign them a rock of documenting their processes, which they then break up into milestones and To Dos to accomplish over the course of the quarter.
As with all BOS tools, start small and build
With scorecards and rocks, we recommend starting small. It’s going to be easier to add than subtract here. Think about the metrics you’re already tracking, and how to make them as simple as possible for a weekly check-in. Think about your big goals in progress, and add them as rocks. Be intentional about how you set better goals for your team.
Don’t try to add a comprehensive list on your first go; just get one or two of the most important scorecard metrics and rocks incorporated, and see how they add to your meeting and work flows once you have a more systematic way of being accountable for them. Once you get into the habit, add more.
By the time you hit your next (or first) quarterly meeting, you’ll already have some experience which will help you set better goals for the next quarter.
We built Strety to make scorecards and rocks visual and easy to track, because spreadsheets killed these tools for us at BrightGauge. When your metrics and goals live in an integrated platform, you can see at a glance what’s on track and what needs attention.
Step 4: Circle back to your business vision
Different business operating systems will have different nomenclature for business vision, but there are a few main components to a business vision in almost every BOS:
Mission: this can include how your business serves people, how you want to be positioned in the marketplace, and who you’ll help.
Goals: this is the place for your biggest and most audacious long term goals — where you see your company 3 and 5 years from now. Defining your long-term goals helps you work backward to build your yearly and quarterly goals.
People: your people are usually one of your biggest investments and your foundation. Your business vision helps you define core values for your company culture and the seats you need in an org chart. This will help you get organized and confident in your team.
In the V/TO™ (aka Vision/Traction Organizer™) from EOS®, the business vision sits alongside your core value, core focus, longer-term goals, and marketing strategy. Strety includes the V/TO template to help you organize these critical elements in one place.
Why vision work might come later (and why that’s counterintuitive)
While many people are tempted to start building their business operating system with their business vision, we caution against it. This is probably the most counterintuitive advice in this entire guide, but trust us on this one.
You’ll be surprised by how time-consuming (and sometimes confusing) defining your business vision can be. Even if you’ve been a mission-oriented company for a long time, defining your business vision within an operating framework requires that you organize it in a way that lends itself to the rest of your tools in your operating system. It’s harder than it looks.
If you start with your meetings and other BOS tools first, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how a BOS works. This will help make sure your business vision is as specific and actionable as it needs to be to truly act as a helpful North star for your business.
The other thing to keep in mind — defining your business vision will take more than an hour, and probably more than a day. Rolling your business vision into a larger planning meeting, like a quarterly meeting, is a good way to get started. If you’re running 2-day quarterly meeting agendas, put some time on both days for your business vision. Brainstorm on the first day, give yourselves a break, and come back on the second day to agree on your vision moving forward. If you need more time, take it!
The team at Heritage Advises gave us insight into building their business vision:
“Don’t rush through anything. At the moment, it feels like you have 10,000 other things to work on, which we always do as small business owners. But it’s going to set you up for success in the long term. We fire and hire today based on what we did two years ago, based on our core values. That one exercise of really focusing on the vision is still very much with us today. So don’t breeze through anything, and take it all seriously.”
Step 5: Be patient and make adjustments as needed
Once you’ve got the basics of all your tools in place, remember that they should be a living part of your company’s daily work — emphasis on living.
If you find that a scorecard metric is consistently unreachable, change it. If a rock is off-track this quarter, make a note as to whether you should pursue that goal next quarter. Whenever you notice the same issue coming up over and over again, find a way to solve it with your business operating system.
Most of all, be patient with yourself and your team. Depending on how long you’ve been in business, implementing a business operating system could be a huge change and a shock to those of us who don’t adapt to change as quickly. However, when the dust settles, your business operating system will be able to guide you on whether you need to make adjustments to your team moving forward. Stay true to your core values, and the rest should fall into place.
Step 6: Support your BOS implementation with a purpose-built platform
“If you’re already investing in the operating system, my advice is to invest in a platform that will support it. Why try to build from scratch what Strety’s team has already built for you! It will make your job so much easier, especially when you’ve got hard work to get done.”
— Dana Wockenfuss, Director of Development & Advocacy at The Well
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves! As creators of an EOS platform, we can’t tell you how many horror stories we’ve heard about people trying to implement business frameworks with spreadsheets and email chains. If you make your business operating system difficult to engage with, it will fail. Simple as that.
This isn’t just theory for us. At BrightGauge, we ran into this exact problem. We were using EOS to run the company, but our tools were scattered across spreadsheets, Google Docs, and email threads. It was frustrating, time-consuming, and made it harder for our team to engage with the framework we knew was helping us grow. That frustration is exactly why we built Strety.
Of course, we hope you’d choose Strety as the platform of choice for implementing a business operating system. We’ve connected EOS tools into an integrated platform that will make it easy for your team to engage with and benefit from your BOS. From our own experience running business operating systems at prior companies, to our current experience building the best EOS platform available, we know how important this stuff is — and how much it benefits the teams who get it right.
Learn more about Strety’s EOS tools here, or read our complete guide to Strety.
If you’re ready to try Strety, get your free trial started here, orr book time with one of our experts here.
Frequently asked questions about building a business operating system
What is a business operating system?
A business operating system (BOS) is a framework and set of practices that makes your operations more streamlined and consistent. It includes how you run meetings, solve problems, track metrics, set goals, and work toward your company vision. Think of it as the playbook for running your company — it defines how and why you do the work you do, and the successes you expect to achieve.
Do I really need a business operating system?
If you’re facing recurring issues, struggling to scale beyond a certain point, or spending more time firefighting than building your business, then yes. We’ve seen operators triple revenue and successfully exit after implementing a BOS. Our founding partners credit EOS implementation at BrightGauge with creating the operational foundation that made their eventual exit possible. While every business technically has some kind of operating system (even if it’s accidental), a formal BOS gives you the structure to scale intentionally.
Where should I start when building a business operating system?
Start with meetings. Most BOS frameworks center on structured meetings, and getting these right creates quick wins while naturally leading you to implement other tools like issues tracking and goal-setting. Once you have consistent, productive meetings in place, the rest of your BOS tools will flow from there. This might feel counterintuitive — many people want to start with vision work — but we’ve learned the hard way that meetings provide the foundation everything else builds on.
Should I start with my business vision or with meetings?
Start with meetings, then build other tools, and tackle your vision last. Vision work is harder than it looks and goes better once you understand how your BOS tools work together. Even if you’ve been a mission-oriented company for a long time, defining your business vision within an operating framework requires organizing it in a way that lends itself to the rest of your tools. It will take more than a day, and you’ll make better decisions about your vision after you’ve experienced how meetings, issues, and goals flow together in your system.
How long does it take to implement a business operating system?
You can start seeing benefits from better meetings within weeks. Full implementation typically takes 6-12 months as you layer in tools incrementally, but you’ll feel progress at each step. The key is to focus on one component at a time — get meetings working, then add issues tracking, then layer in metrics and goals, and finally tackle your vision during quarterly planning. This incremental approach prevents overwhelm and builds momentum with quick wins along the way.
Do I need to hire a coach or implementer?
Many operators benefit from an objective, expert guide, and research shows that organizations working with consultants have an 85% success rate with implementation. EOS Implementers and other BOS coaches can help you avoid common pitfalls and move faster. However, self-implementation is possible with the right tools and commitment. The advantage of a coach is the outside perspective on what’s really holding your business back, plus the accountability to keep moving forward when implementation gets challenging.
What’s the difference between scorecards and rocks?
Scorecards are weekly metrics you check for consistency — like the number of sales calls made or customer support tickets resolved. They’re your leading indicators that help you spot problems early. Rocks are bigger quarterly goals or projects that move the needle on your longer-term objectives — like launching a new product, hitting a revenue milestone, or completing a major process documentation project. Scorecards are about consistency, rocks are about progress toward big goals.
What software do I need to support my business operating system?
You need purpose-built BOS software. Spreadsheets and email chains will cause your implementation to fail because they make the system difficult to engage with daily. The right platform should integrate your meetings, issues, scorecards, rocks, and vision tools in one place so your team can easily see what’s happening and stay accountable. At Strety, we built our platform specifically because we experienced the pain of trying to run EOS on disconnected tools — we knew there had to be a better way for operators to engage with their framework every single day.
What are the most common mistakes when implementing a BOS?
The biggest mistakes we see are: (1) trying to implement everything at once instead of building incrementally, (2) starting with vision work instead of meetings, (3) using spreadsheets and disconnected tools instead of integrated software, (4) giving up during the learning curve instead of being patient, and (5) treating the BOS as a one-time project instead of a living system that evolves with your business. Remember that 50% of system implementations fail on the first attempt — having the right sequence and the right tools dramatically improves your odds of success.
How do I know if my business operating system is working?
You’ll know your BOS is working when: meetings feel productive instead of draining, problems get solved instead of recurring, your team knows what’s expected of them, goals are being hit consistently, and you’re spending more time working on the business instead of in it. Quantitatively, you should see improvements in your key metrics, higher team engagement, and progress toward your long-term goals. Many of our customers report significant revenue growth — like Ian Groves at Start Tech, who tripled revenue in five years after implementing EOS.
Ready to build your business operating system? The best time to start is now. Pick your next meeting to upgrade to a structured agenda, and go from there. We built Strety because we needed it ourselves at BrightGauge, and we’ve helped hundreds of operators since then implement their BOS successfully. Start your free trial or book a demo with our team to see how the right platform makes all the difference.