Organizational Activist
Walt is an Organizational Activist.
His daily mission, his purpose, cause and passion is eliminating the restraints of organizational confusion and dysfunction that are holding individual contributors back from being the best they can be. When these boundaries are eliminated everyone enjoys more freedom. CEOs, leaders, owners, employees enjoy more money, more time and less stress = freedom.
Walt’s clients call him Uncle Walt. One client, John, explains why: “Well, we all know Walt loves us and cares for us like a loving Uncle and he is fun, we like seeing him most of the time. He will tell us things we don’t want to hear and point out things we don’t want to see, and he will take time to teach us, show us, coach us on how to get better. But, at the end of the day, he is an Uncle not a parent, we do not have to listen to anything he says, and eventually, he will just go home.”
The good thing is Uncle Walt is a young uncle with fresh ideas formed by tons of experience, so he is not practicing on us or making it up. He came out of school with Accounting and Statistics degrees, did four audit seasons with E&Y, founded his first company in 1986, grew it and 3 others for 20 years, ultimately selling in 2006. After selling he reinvented himself as a strategy coach working with 100s of CEO clients this led to EOS® where he is the third Implementor having gradated over 180 companies from the program across 1,200+ off site retreat days. Recently EOS asked Walt to be the head coach of the Expert Implementers.
All of this experience has led Walt to categorize and capture his coaching into four separate but interdependent disciplines:
- The discipline of Strategic Thinking. Book: Seeing the Invisible.
- The discipline of Culture and Employee Engagement. Book: The Patient Organization.
- The discipline of Org Structure and Design. Book: Death of the Org Chart.
- The discipline of Organizational Operations. EOS® Gino’s Book: Traction – Get a grip on your business.
These four disciplines can work independently, but, they work best when combined.
The result is Freedom. Freedom for employees, owners, investors. Freedom from the bonds of Money, Time and Stress. It works.
Walt Brown – Organizational Activist
Helping companies enjoy the EOS® Life for 14 years.
Walt Brown – Full-time Expert EOS® Implementer since 2008.
More than 180 graduated clients across 1,200 session days.
Walt is the 3rd EOSi trained by Gino and Don.
Client Quote: $170+ Million, >600 Employees
Dear Uncle Walt—
More than a few times we have all said Praise God that we implemented EOS with your 7 Questions, and undertook the single largest project in the history of The Company with our “Transform our Technology” initiative to stand up a whole new ERP system before the global pandemic of 2020.
Thank you so much for your help in getting us prepared to navigate such challenging issues so well with an ever growing competence and confidence in the EOS tools.
Results have been record high gross profits, team member engagement, top box values assessments, and net promoter scores with our customers are all indicators to me of the success that EOS has helped bring to our company.
I truly believe that EOS was the biggest gift we could ever give the company and our team members and our future third generation of family member leaders. For that I’m eternally grateful…
Merry Christmas!
Robert
I love helping companies master EOS!
Now-a-days it seems my clients are falling into one of two categories.
In Category One are the older Millennial CEOs who wants to go hard and deep, who want to learn and measure the results of what they have learned. And, they want to graduate! No time to waste.
In Category Two are clients I am taking over from another EOSi peer, and this is great news. I imagined a tipping point where we would have so many raving fans of EOS that there would be a sub-set who have spent 3 amazing years with their first EOSi and now both are ready for a change, a different perspective, something new yet the same. Normally these clients interview two or three expert EOSis, and I am winning my fair share. I’m not a fit for everyone.
While every company is unique and requires EOS adjustment and finesse, your organization will not be a learning guinea pig. As the 3rd EOS Implementer trained by Gino Wickman and Don Tinney in 2008, I have had the honor of guiding and graduating over 170+ companies thru their EOS Journey to mastery. That translates into over 1,104 session days with client teams. Mastery means your people can teach it to everyone that follows.
Generally my clients enjoy similar results to what Gallup sees with thier employee engagement results. 10% more customer loyaly, 18% better sales results, 25% less turnover in low turn0ver companies, 51% fewer errors, 61% fewer saftey incidences, 81% less absenteeism, 23% better EBITDA – all measurable.
Clients graduate so I am always looking to add another good one. My local and virtual day rate is $9,500 and a typical EOS installation is around 9 days across two years, [ there are your budget numbers, my pleasure, =:- ) ] My travel rate is based on an algorithm and varies based on hassle.
What do I mean by graduate? It means two things: 1. Your organization has mastered the tools of EOS, mastery means all can teach and hone them throughout the current organization and to anyone entering in the future. 2. You are realizing a measurable ROI on your EOS time and dollar investment. You will see top line gains, your bottom line will be 20% thicker on average, net free cash flow will be measurably stronger, retention and engagement will be solid with much lower turnover in key people, safety incidences will decrease etc. etc. My clients measure their success and work to hit their measures through EOS Mastery.
Since clients graduate, I am always looking for another “good one”.
People say: “Wow Walt, you are so busy, are you full?” I say: “Heck no! as a matter of fact, I will always make room for a good one, and, remember, I graduate clients, so I am always looking.” So, what is a “good one”?
It starts at the top, my initial relationship starts with the CEO or Owner(s). If this person is humble, hungry and smart, if they are never satisfied with the status quo, if they realize it is not all about the how, but, depends deeply on the who. If they are committed to building the finest team they can build and surrounding others with these same team membersmates, then they will be a good fit.
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Author: 1st Book – The Patient Organization
WHY SYSTEMS LIKE EOS, TRACTION, SCALING UP, ETC. WORK AND NOT WORK.
The reason implementations of Organizational Operating Systems (EOS is an OOS) fail out right, or, fail to produce the ROI you hoped for is simple. Your people are seeing the EOS system as something you are doing To them v. For them. When you can flip this script and answer their question “What’s in it for me?”, then you will get the buy-in and ROI you are looking for.
The way you flip the script is to measure and communicate. The Patient Organization describes why and how you do this using 7 Questions.
Example: Why does the EOS work we do with our clients drive a significant ROI? Two reasons, 1. we measure, and 2. we communicate. We measure EOS’s effectiveness to upgrade your culture, engagement, accountability and retention using the 7 Questions Culture and Engagement Survey as the baseline and foundation of your Why, and, we use the 7 Questions as 7 Promises to communicate clearly: to describe to our folks Why we are doing EOS.
Once our people see that we are doing EOS For them and not To them we get buy-in and are able to create one single organization with a great culture, high engagement, accountability and retention.
Note: I execute very pure* and direct EOS Implementations – I do not add any new tools, or change the EOS Implementation method, we only add a way to measure and communicate via the 7 Questions and 7 Promises I outline in my book.
(* “pure” is a term of art in the EOS community, it is referring to sticking to the script, teaching the tools in the EOS way.)
I am often criticized by my peers because I don’t milk my client engagements for longer periods. I ask: “Why should I!?” If I focus on teaching the material purely and teach the “why” beneath the material, and, don’t become a crutch, then my clients will master the EOS material faster, gain confidence and they will graduate as masters!
More:
The “Why” beneath EOS is captured in my book The Patient Organization, it holds the 7 keys to unlocking the power inside your Organizational Operating System (OOS). Whether it is Rockefeller Habits, Scaling Up, Holocracy, The Advantage, 4DX, Traction, EOS®, or a self-developed system. It will answer why does EOS work? Why does Traction work? Why does Scaling Up work? and how does EOS work? how does Traction work, and how does Scaling Up work etc. etc.?
The Patient Organization and the 7 Questions will make your system come alive for your employees.
I believe my clients deserve a robust ROI from their EOS investment. An ROI that comes from a great culture, engaged employees, robust cash flow and dependable predictable profit. We link our ROI expectations to the statistics from Gallup. Gallup points out that companies who enjoy top quartile engagement and culture enjoy 21% more profit, 20% fast growth, 10% better customer loyalty, 56% fewer safety incidents. These are they baselines we are pushing for in the EOS Implementations we do together.
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Author: 2nd Book – Death of the Org Chart, Rise of the Organizational Graph.
ORGANIZATIONAL COMPLEXITY HAS OUTGROWN GRANDADDY’S ORG CHART
My clients and I wrote this book based on 200+ organizational structure and redesign engagements where the goal was to determine and record exactly who is doing what and why. Org charts can no longer capture the complexity inherent in modern tech-enabled organizations.
What we discovered was current approaches were not up to the task of capturing the complexities in modern day organizations – so – along with client input, we created a modern day approach called the Organizational Cognizance Model™ and the 14 Point Checklist™.
Death outlines the model and shares detailed facilitations and how-to you can use in your company to remove organizational confusion and dysfunction.
I run a company that trains and certifies coaches to teach the Organizational Cognizance model that is described in the book.
I am also a practicing OCOG Coach myself, honing the approach in the real world every day.
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Co-founder of OGraph.io
State of the Art Org Charting & Org Graphing Software
Creator of the Organizational Cognizance® Model and Organizational Cognizance University
This is the future of organizational Structure and Design
The fact is modern day organizations are more complex than the old organizational design and structure models can handle. It was time to create a new perspective, time to create a model that is flexible, relevant and real.
THE ORGANIZATIONAL COGNIZANCE® MODEL VISUALIZED WITH OGRAPH
I am dedicated to the employee who suffers under the yoke of organizational confusion and dysfunction. To smash this confusion and dysfunction, we developed the Organizational Cognizance Model (OCog) and the 14 Point Checklist. OGraph organizational chart software is anchored in the OCog Model. OCog is the result of 12 years of focus, and more than 15,000 hours helping 100s of organizations eliminate confusion and dysfunction by insuring everyone can answer the root questions: Who is doing what, why, and what am I doing, and why?