Through his research at Bain & Company, Michael Mankins presents a pervasive issue with the approach large, global enterprises take for strategic planning: inconsistency. In his compelling article in Harvard Business Review, Mankins presents this as a core problem: “Strategic decisions are often thought to be unique—like snowflakes.” The result is predictable: slower decisions, lower-quality outcomes, and missed results. He cites that a quarter of surveyed companies made strategic decisions that were suboptimal, too slow more than 45% of the time, and failed to meet more than 30% of their results.
Mankins’ solution is to make strategy a form of standard work. At its core, that’s exactly what the Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS®) is for small to mid-sized businesses. While his research focuses on massive enterprises, the EOS framework brings the same rigor, discipline, and structure to entrepreneurial companies in a vastly simplified approach. Let’s explore how.
1. Setting the Priorities: The EOS V/TO®
Mankins argues that strategic clarity starts with a “performance ambition”—an aspirational yet realistic vision that stretches beyond the current state. In EOS, this ambition is crystalized in the Vision/Traction Organizer® (V/TO®). It sets a long-term target (10-Year Target™), a compelling 3-Year Picture™, and a detailed 1-Year Plan—each step aligned with company values and Core Focus™.
What Mankins calls the “strategic backlog”—a prioritized list of strategic, operational, and financial challenges—is directly paralleled in Company Rocks. These are the company’s top priorities for the next 90 days. EOS ensures leaders avoid what Mankins describes as one of the biggest traps: vague outcomes without specific actions. Each Rock is S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound) ensuring alignment, clarity, and execution.
Rather than letting strategic priorities drift or mutate depending on who’s making the decision, EOS captures them in a shared document visible to the entire leadership team. This avoids Mankins’ critique of “unduly constrained” or “overly vague” priorities that never materialize into real decisions.
2. Ongoing Strategic Management: EOS Level 10 Meeting®
Mankins outlines a two-part strategic cadence: one session to explore facts and alternatives, and another to make firm choices and commitments. This is precisely how EOS handles strategic issues—weekly—through the Level 10 Meeting.
Every Level 10 Meeting includes an IDS® (Identify, Discuss, Solve) session, where leadership teams tackle their highest-priority issues. EOS emphasizes solving the root cause—an approach Mankins applauds when he says companies must dig deeper than surface symptoms. “It’s hard to find the right answer if the wrong question is being asked,” he notes. IDS forces teams to ask the right questions and resolve—not revisit—issues.
In fact, EOS clients document issues in an Issues List, solve them using the IDS process, and track them through To-Dos and Rocks—removing ambiguity about what has been decided, by whom, and how progress will be measured. This is the decision log Mankins says is critical: “Strategy is no longer subject to hallway debates or passive resistance.”
Additionally, EOS companies follow a disciplined Meeting Pulse, which includes not just weekly L10 meetings but Quarterly Sessions to reset priorities and Annual Planning days to reflect, strategize, and realign on vision. This cadence matches Mankins’ call for a strategic “drumbeat”—a regular decision-making rhythm tied to a real calendar, not spontaneous retreats or offsites.
3. Monitoring Business Performance: Scorecards, Rocks, and Quarterlies
Mankins emphasizes that companies need to regularly monitor execution against their strategy—not just report numbers like a weather forecast. He points to Amgen’s use of leading indicators and performance dialogues to drive accountability and adaptation.
EOS enables this kind of performance rigor through its Scorecard, a weekly pulse on 5–15 key measurable activities that predict success. These are not lagging financial indicators, but leading activities tracked weekly—so issues are spotted early and solved quickly.
Moreover, each Rock has a clear owner and progress is reviewed weekly. And each Quarterly Session is a built-in performance dialogue: the leadership team stops, reflects on what got done, identifies what didn’t, and re-aligns on priorities for the next 90 days.
If priorities are off track, EOS encourages a reset. Mankins echoes this need for adaptability: “Few strategies, no matter how well crafted, can be executed without adjustments over time.” In EOS, this is not an exception—it’s the system.
EOS is strategy with execution built-in, standardized for the small, entrepreneurial business. Mankins writes, “If a manufacturing process had a 25% defect rate, exceeded targeted cycle times more than 45% of the time, and experienced a yield loss of more than 30%, it would be deemed unacceptable.” Yet this is the norm for strategy in most companies. EOS exists to change that.
Where Mankins prescribes lean, rigorous, repeatable strategy for Fortune 500 giants, EOS delivers it in a framework that fits the reality of entrepreneurial businesses. With the V/TO to set priorities, the Level 10 Meeting to manage strategy weekly, and Scorecards and Rocks to monitor performance, EOS brings the discipline of world-class strategy into companies with 10–300 employees.
Business is a game of choices. EOS helps companies make them faster, better, and more consistently. That’s not just good strategy—it’s good business.
Trademarks owned by EOS Worldwide, LLC.
Michael Mankins, “Lean Strategy Making,” Harvard Business Review, May 2025. https://hbr.org/2025/05/lean-strategy-making