If you’re running on the Entrepreneurial Operating System®, or EOS®, you’re familiar with the focus on setting proper meeting rhythms for your business. It’s a key component to mastering Gino Wickman’s business operating system, from the weekly Level 10 Meetings® to the Quarterly State of the Company (QSC), and several more in between.
What is the Quarterly State of the Company?
The growth of your company relies on your entire team moving in unison toward the same goals. Each quarter, the QSC is a time to meet as a team and review what you accomplished in the previous quarter, what you are focused on for the current quarter, and to recast the long-term vision of the company.
As your team grows into multiple departments, it’s important to stay connected and avoid a siloed work environment. If you have fully implemented EOS, your departments are each managed by a senior, have weekly and quarterly meeting rhythms, their own scorecard, and multiple quarterly rocks.
With each team member’s focus on their individual role with the accountability chart, it’s easy to lose touch with the work of those around you and the overall goals of the company.
The QSC offers a reset, realignment, and recasting of vision for your entire team.
What is the Format for a Quarterly State of the Company?
There are a lot of different formats for the QSC depending on the size of your company, number of locations, and whether you have a mostly remote or in-house team.
We have a team of 25 located in one office, with the majority working in-house. For us, it works best to hold our QSC as an all-hands sit down, in-person, about 2 weeks after the quarter has finished. This gives us time to compile all the information from the previous quarter and set rocks for the new quarter.
Our executive team and senior leaders present various portions of the agenda.
Here’s a look at our QSC agenda:
- Introduction
- Quarterly Celebrations
- Work Anniversaries
- Birthdays
- Upcoming Events
- Where We’ve Been
- Completed Rocks by Department
- Rock Spotlight
- Quarterly Financial Snapshot
- Quarterly Project Spotlight
- Where We Are
- Upcoming Rocks by Department
- Where We’re Going
- Review of Accountability Chart
- Review of Vision / Traction Organizer
- Closing
This meeting typically lasts two hours. We build in a couple breaks and have 7-8 different people speak to help break up the monotony and keep everyone engaged.
Is Your Quarterly State of the Company Engaging?
About three years in, we realized our QSC was boring. It was long, unengaging, hard to fully process, and didn’t properly recognize everyone’s hard work. It was 100% verbal, with no visuals or handouts.
We needed a new format. So, I set a quarterly rock for myself to start brainstorming a better way to deliver all of the key information and keep everyone engaged. I also wanted to provide a meeting takeaway that could be reviewed later, reduce future questions, and remove the need to fully process everything during the meeting.
While the agenda and content largely remained the same, we packed it into a staple-bound booklet that’s 20-ish pages long. It’s bright, large, easy to follow, and provides a nice piece to reference later.
10 Reasons We Prioritize the Quarterly State of the Company
The QSC has become my favorite meeting. Despite the challenge of fitting it into the schedule of 25 people, it has remained a top priority for everyone and we have seen a lot of fruit from our consistent quarterly meeting.
- It acknowledges and celebrates everyone’s hard work from the previous quarter
- It states publicly everyone’s goals for the current quarter, which creates accountability
- It offers a reminder for where we want to be in 1 year, 3 years, and 10 years
- It reduces the tendency to work within a silo
- It provides a space to have in-depth discussion of key initiatives
- It lets the team hear from each other – not just the owners, but all of the company leadership
- It sharpens the team’s focus on our company’s top priorities
- It allows the company owners to regularly cast vision
- It demonstrates our priority of team communication
- It improves team unity
Other EOS Meeting Rhythms and Tools to Explore
Our company has run on EOS since 2019 and it has helped us grow tremendously. I’ve written other articles about EOS meeting rhythms and I hope they help you on your entrepreneurial journey and in the implementation of EOS.
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