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Why EOS software + performance management is a perfect match

Most EOS software does one thing well: it helps you run better meetings and track your rocks. But here’s the problem — EOS isn’t just about quarterly planning sessions and Level 10 meetings. At its core, EOS is about getting the right people in the right seats and building a company culture that executes with discipline and accountability.

Yet when it comes to the continuous people management that makes EOS actually work, most platforms fall short. They’re built for tracking goals, not developing the humans who achieve them. Performance management gets relegated to spreadsheets, annual reviews, external software tools, or worse — it doesn’t happen at all between quarterly conversations.

That’s why we built our EOS software differently. We believe performance management deserves the same attention, integration, and excellence as your Vision/Traction Organizer. This is the story of why we built the comprehensive performance management tools into our EOS software — starting with the people component, extending to culture, and solving the gaps that other platforms ignore.

The People Component in EOS

Right People, Right Seats Requires the Right Tools

Gino Wickman put the People Component front and center in the EOS framework because he understood something fundamental: your business is only as strong as your team. But here’s what the research tells us about the current state of people management.

According to Gallup, 70% of the variance in team-level engagement is determined solely by the manager. That’s a staggering statistic. It means that no matter how brilliant your company vision or how clear your rocks are, your success hinges on whether your managers can effectively develop and engage their people.

Yet most companies track their quarterly rocks with more rigor than they track their people’s development.

The opportunity here is massive. Gartner research shows that only 31% of employees report they are engaged, enthusiastic and energized by their work. That means nearly 70% of your workforce isn’t operating at full capacity. For EOS companies committed to building great organizations, this represents both a challenge and an opportunity.

Organizations with strong cultures see dramatically different results—up to 72% higher employee engagement than those with misaligned cultures, and highly engaged teams achieve 21% greater profitability. The connection between getting the people component right and business performance isn’t theoretical. It’s measurable.

The human side of business

EOS companies understand something important: business discipline and helping people thrive aren’t opposing forces. They’re complementary.

We build tools to support managers in having the difficult conversations that come with maintaining high standards. When you need to address performance issues or determine if someone is truly in the right seat, you have data to inform the conversation. It’s empathy backed by evidence.

The documentation protects both the company and the employee. When decisions need to be made, you have a clear record of conversations, development efforts, and outcomes. This transparency builds trust and ensures fairness.

Build a great culture with EOS as the foundation

Culture-First Design for EOS Companies

The research on culture and business performance is unambiguous. According to Great Place to Work, companies with great cultures have three times better stock market performance than those without. In a study by Eagle Hill Consulting, 63% of employees say organizational culture directly impacts their organization’s success.

On the flip side, the cost of getting culture wrong is steep. Organizations with poor company culture experience 18% lower productivity and 15% lower profitability. For an EOS company running on the Entrepreneurial Operating System — or any business, really — that’s unacceptable.

Culture-first EOS software design

EOS already has culture baked into its framework through core values. But core values on a wall or in your V/TO mean nothing without daily reinforcement. That’s where software plays a crucial role.

We designed our platform with a simple belief: software should nurture people, not just track tasks. Great company cultures are built through consistent, meaningful interactions between managers and team members, between peers, and between leadership and the entire organization.

The impact of this approach is significant. Research shows that a supportive culture increases motivation by 57% and produces individual performance improvement of around 20%. When people feel supported and connected to purpose, they bring discretionary effort. They go above and beyond.

Daily culture support in Strety

Personal Spaces for Growth

Every team member gets their own dashboard where they can see their goals, track their progress toward the company vision, and understand how their role connects to organizational success. This isn’t just transparency for transparency’s sake — it creates ownership.

When people can see how their daily work contributes to quarterly rocks and annual goals, engagement increases. When they can track their own development and celebrate progress, motivation compounds.

Goals and Vision Alignment

Personal goals connect directly to company vision in our system. An individual contributor can draw a straight line from their weekly priorities to the company’s 10-year target. This visual representation of contribution reinforces purpose every single day.

The regular check-ins are built into the workflow, not bolted on. Managers don’t need to remember to schedule development conversations—the system prompts them, provides context, and makes it easy.

Design That People Actually Enjoy Using

We obsessed over the interface because adoption equals cultural impact. If your team finds the software clunky or confusing, they won’t use it. If they don’t use it, your culture initiatives die in a spreadsheet somewhere.

Our accountability chart is beautiful and intuitive with visual tags and enhancements to instantly see how your org is looking and where help is needed. The print-friendly versions are optimized for in-person strategic sessions—because we know some of your best thinking happens offline. The entire experience is designed to feel helpful, not bureaucratic.

Continuous Nurturing, Not Annual Events

Culture isn’t built in annual reviews. It’s built in the daily and weekly rhythms of team interaction. Our 1:1 meeting tools create psychological safety through consistent manager-employee connection.

Google’s Project Oxygen research shows that managers who hold frequent 1:1 meetings with their teams tend to score higher in performance. The connection is direct: regular 1:1s improve manager effectiveness, which improves team performance, which improves business results.

Why This Matters for EOS

Your core values mean nothing without consistent reinforcement. Right People, Right Seats requires knowing your people deeply—not just evaluating them quarterly. Culture compounds when your tools support the daily behaviors that matter.

Most EOS companies get this intellectually. They understand that culture drives performance. But translating that understanding into daily practice requires infrastructure. It requires tools that make the right behaviors easy and natural.

That’s what we built.

The Performance Management Gap in EOS Software

What’s Missing from Traditional EOS Platforms

The standard EOS software landscape does certain things exceptionally well. Level 10 meetings run smoothly. Rocks get tracked. Scorecards display your metrics. These are table stakes, and most platforms deliver them competently.

But there’s a glaring gap: continuous performance management between quarterly sessions.

The problem isn’t unique to EOS software. Gartner research found that 87% of HR leaders are considering changes to performance reviews, and over two-thirds of organizations make performance management changes in any given year. The dissatisfaction with traditional approaches is nearly universal.

Why continuous performance matters

Right People, Right Seats is an ongoing practice of developing capability, addressing issues early, and ensuring alignment. The research on this is clear and compelling.

According to Lighthouse, only 15% of employees who work for a manager who does not meet with them regularly are engaged. But managers who regularly meet with their employees almost tripled that level of engagement. The difference between sporadic check-ins and regular cadence isn’t incremental—it’s transformational.

The trend away from annual reviews reflects this understanding. In 2016, 82% of companies used annual reviews. By 2019, that number had dropped to just 54%. Organizations are abandoning the old model because it doesn’t work.

The companies replacing annual reviews with continuous feedback see remarkable results: 40% higher employee engagement and 26% improvement in performance. This isn’t about doing more work—it’s about doing the right work at the right frequency.

The manager effectiveness challenge

Here’s where it gets interesting. Not all feedback is created equal, and not all manager approaches produce the same results.

Gartner’s research on manager types revealed something counterintuitive. “Always-On” managers—those who provide constant, indiscriminate feedback—actually degrade employee performance by up to 8%. These are the managers who give feedback on everything, overwhelming their team members with a firehose of input.

On the other hand, “Connector” managers—who foster meaningful connections and guide employees to the right resources at the right time—improve performance by up to 26%. The difference between these two approaches is a 34-point swing in performance impact.

This kind of finding guides our entire product philosophy. We build tools that help managers become connectors, not micromanagers. Tools that provide structure without overwhelming people. Tools that make purposeful feedback easy and random feedback less likely.

Why we built differently

We recognized that effective performance management happens in the space between quarterly planning sessions. It happens in weekly 1:1s, in timely 360 feedback, in pulse surveys that catch issues early.

The tools needed to make managers more effective without adding burden. They needed to integrate with EOS practices rather than competing for attention. And they needed to feel natural, not like extra work.

That’s the gap we set out to close.

Performance management tools built for EOS companies

The tools your team actually needs (and will love to use)

Other platforms treat performance management as something you bolt onto your EOS practice. A separate system. A different login. Disconnected data.

Our approach is fundamentally different: everything connects to your accountability chart, your rocks, and your scorecard. Performance management isn’t separate from EOS execution—it’s integral to it.

Gartner research shows that increasing the utility of performance management has substantial positive effects on workforce performance, engagement, and employee perceptions of fairness. Utility is the key word. Performance management that feels useful gets used. Performance management that feels bureaucratic gets ignored.

EOS Software performance management tools

People Analyzer

When you update someone’s status, it reflects immediately across the system. When you’re preparing for Quarterly Conversations, you have current information, not stale assessments from months ago.

The visual clarity helps leadership teams make Right People, Right Seats decisions with confidence. You can see at a glance who’s thriving, who’s developing, and where you have concerns that need to be addressed. 

Quarterly Conversations

Our Quarterly Conversation framework follows the EOS process but adds power through integration. Every conversation is documented with historical tracking so you can see employee development over time. The action items created during these conversations flow automatically into 1:1 meeting agendas.

This continuity ensures that the plans you make in Quarterly Conversations actually get executed. Nothing gets forgotten in the three months between formal reviews. 

1:1 Meetings

The 1:1 meeting agendas are created automatically based on your accountability chart. When someone reports to a manager, the system creates the recurring meeting cadence. Managers get templates that ensure consistency across the organization while allowing for customization based on team member needs.

The impact of getting 1:1s right is substantial. Adobe saw a 30% reduction in voluntary turnover after embracing frequent one-on-ones. When people feel seen, heard, and supported by their manager, they stay.

Research from Lighthouse shows that effective 1:1 meetings lead to 20% more productivity and profitability, along with lower turnover and reduced absenteeism. These aren’t small gains — they’re transformational for team performance.

Issues that come up in 1:1s can be flagged to surface in Level 10 meetings when they need broader team attention. This connection between individual conversations and team problem-solving is how great EOS companies operate. 

360 Reviews

Our 360 review process is designed around your EOS core values. Instead of generic leadership competencies, you evaluate people on what actually matters in your culture. The anonymous feedback provides insights that people can’t get any other way.

A 5-year study showed that performance scores rose with each passing year from the 2nd to 4th year of 360 feedback implementation. The long-term benefit comes from sustained use, not one-time events.

When implemented for development rather than evaluation, 360 reviews create powerful growth opportunities. The results inform People Analyzer updates and feed directly into development plans created during Quarterly Conversations.

HR Center

The HR Center serves two purposes: it ensures compliance, and it provides context. It makes it easy for HR pros to kick off review cycles and check for review and 1:1 completion rates. If anything’s off track, reporting waves a red flag and points you where you need to go for additional context.

Engagement Surveys

We built surveys in Strety to serve a variety of purposes. The Vibe Check surveys run monthly to catch culture issues before they escalate. Gartner found that only one-third of employees believe their organization will act on their feedback. Our system is designed to close this action gap.

You can create To Dos, Issues, and Headlines from survey results so when you see something anomalous, you immediately take context-rich action. When engagement drops or specific issues spike, leadership knows immediately and can address them before they derail rocks or damage culture. 

The integration advantage in Strety

Here’s how it works in practice:

A team member receives 360 feedback highlighting communication as a development area. This insight appears in their next Quarterly Conversation, where manager and employee create a specific development plan. That plan generates action items tracked in weekly 1:1s. The manager connects the employee with a communication training resource. Progress gets documented. Three months later, the next 360 review shows improvement, which updates the People Analyzer status.

No switching between platforms. No duplicate data entry. No wondering what happened to that development goal from last quarter. Everyone works from the same source of truth, and the system ensures follow-through.

Performance data informs EOS decisions, and EOS decisions inform performance management. It’s a true integration, not a forced connection.

Better tools reduce manager burden

The counterintuitive truth: structured performance management actually reduces manager burden rather than increasing it.

Gartner research shows that employees who report to managers who coach effectively are 40% more engaged, exhibit 38% more discretionary effort and are 20% more likely to stay. But most managers struggle with coaching because they lack the right framework and tools.

Our tools make effective coaching easier, not harder. Automation handles scheduling, reminders, and documentation. Templates provide structure without rigidity. Integration means managers have context without needing to search for it.

Managers can focus on what they do best—having meaningful conversations with their team members—while the system handles the logistics and ensures nothing falls through the cracks.

Performance management that works with

We built our EOS software with a conviction: the people component deserves the same level of integration, usability, and excellence as every other part of your operating system.

Starting with the complete people component—the foundation of Right People, Right Seats — we created tools that turn quarterly assessments into continuous development. Building on the understanding that culture drives performance, we designed a system that reinforces your core values daily. Recognizing the performance management gap in traditional EOS software, we integrated the tools that make continuous feedback natural and effective.

The result is EOS software for companies that execute on people with the same discipline they bring to vision, data, and process.

Research shows that when organizations effectively support managers in engagement action planning, they can increase employee engagement by 51%. Our integrated approach makes this support automatic rather than optional. It’s built into your weekly rhythms, your quarterly conversations, and your long-term people development.

The best EOS software doesn’t just run your operating system. It helps you build the team that makes it work.

If you’re ready to close the performance management gap in your EOS practice, book a call with us so we can show you how our tools work together to create something greater than the sum of their parts. Or jump into Strety free for 30 days. Because getting traction isn’t just about hitting your rocks—it’s about developing the people who make everything else possible.

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