Traction

Introduction

This book doesn't really need much of an introduction. It seems to be on fire across social media, recommendations in Audible, YouTube video reviews, and is recommended inside other books. It had been on my to-read list for a long time and I finally knocked it out. It was definitely a solid book overall, but also a bit strange.

Essentially, the book lays out a full operating system for running a small to medium company. Parts of the operating system are really simple and easy (e.g. how to have a meeting to talk about issues) while others are pretty smart and thorough (e.g. "rocks" for each person each quarter). There were times when the information felt juvenile, overly simplistic, and silly. At one point he explains that in a meeting if someone tries to go on a tangent you should stop them and yell "Tangent Alert!" On other topics I'm actually wrestling with how powerful simple ideas can be.

One good example is scorecards. Gino is a big proponent that leaders should have a scorecard for each level that has a few key numbers and metrics you can check each week. As the numbers change you can tell what is changing in the business and you'll get a warning that you need to step in and make corrections. Initially, I almost laughed at how simple that is. I work at a huge company with complex situations all the time. A simple scorecard isn't useful. But over time, I've started thinking more and more about what a scorecard might look like and how useful it might be.

I think some of the lessons in the book are more subtle and powerful than I initially gave them credit for.

Rocks

Rocks are what Gino calls short-term (~ 90 days) goals that exist for all people throughout the organization. There should be 3-7 (usually closer to 3) items that people agree to be responsible for and which must be delivered each 90 days. By focusing on these you are clearly saying that all other things are less important. Each rock has a name associated with it, and if you think you might miss yours you must bring it up in the weekly meeting to try and get support. This is another simple yet powerful idea that I'm considering how to implement.

Culture and Values

One area in which I generally disagreed with him is the idea that you should put people in seats based on their alignment to company values. He talks a lot about the right people in the right seats. This seemed like solid advice. I want to make sure I steel-man his argument so I'm thinking he's making the point that if someone goes against a core company value they won't be a good fit and will show that company value isn't actually important. But he pushed an idea that you first come up with your company values. You then see who in the organization fit those values and you judge or determine what people should be there based on that. There are a lot of traits and values which are good and no list of 3-5 values can possibly encompass an entire organization or show which people should be there or not.

I think my friction with this whole concept is I'm a huge believer in diversity of thought and experience. I've hired people specifically because they didn't match the rest of the team. I want people who will challenge the thinking, see the blind spots, and help us all work better. I think when I read his section on values it made me nervous that you could end up building an organization of people who think and work the same way. Values are useful for describing what an organization wants to optimize for, but I'm skeptical that a few values can describe who will or won't succeed in a complex organization. It's likely not what he was intending, but it's certainly where my head went and the whole section felt icky as I went through it. I think it would be a really cool discussion to dig into with someone.

Visionary vs. Integrator

Lastly, I liked Gino's discussion on how leaders tend to be either Visionaries or Integrators. Often a company is founded with one of each. The visionary tends to be emotional, intuitive, and makes decisions based on gut reactions. They drive culture, and love to build from a blank field and dream up ways to solve problems. Integrators, on the other hand, tend to be data driven, calculating, and driven to take something which is working and make it more efficient and more effective. Integrators dislike an empty field full of potential. I often think of this split as visionaries would love to see a green grassy field and dream up and build a factory. Integrators would rather take over an operational factory and make it 2% more efficient each year.

Based on his descriptions, I'm definitely more of a visionary. My happiest place is an empty field or a blank sheet of paper with a hard problem written at the top. Over the years, however, I've learned that leadership in large organizations often means learning enough integration to turn a vision into a system.

I likely won't be adopting this model wholesale, but there are certainly some pieces worth stealing and incorporating. I also plan to really challenge myself on the simpler ideas to see whether there might be times simple ideas are actually more powerful.

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