Pick a System, Any System

My friend Steven started King of Pops by rolling a cart of popsicles to a street corner and tweeting out his menu. (I'm glossing over a few details, but not many.) By the time I joined the business it had grown, but it was still clinging to that early scrappiness.

This was a feature, not a bug.

The fact that we were still figuring things out as we went along meant everyone had the freedom to shape their role and solve problems their own way. This was empowering for our current team and a major selling point for attracting candidates from more traditional organizations. This is how it is with most startups—talented people value autonomy.

But they also value clarity.

And you can't have clarity without some sort of system.

To give the team at King of Pops more clarity, we implemented the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). It's exactly what the name suggests: a set of tools to help small businesses stop making things up as they go.

As soon as we rolled it out, there was a mutiny. Everyone despised it. There were accusations that scorecards and meeting agendas would crush the soul of the company. I will never forget one employee bemoaning, "This business is starting to feel too much like . . . a business!"

At the height of revolt, Steven pleaded with everyone at an all-company meeting: "Everything around here is too crazy, and we just need to try something, so let's do this stuff for a little while and see how it goes, okay?"

It worked. As soon as he admitted that we knew the plan wasn't perfect and that we just needed to try something, adoption soared. We got the clarity we wanted and we kept our scrappy spirit alive. Most importantly, we developed practices that allowed us to grow.

I’ve since observed the same thing across dozens of growing businesses: The specific system you choose matters far less than simply choosing one.

Steal shamelessly

You've likely heard of EOS, Scaling Up, the Rockefeller Habits, or 4DX (4 Disciplines of Execution). Perhaps you've dabbled in OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) or flirted with a dash of GTD (Getting Things Done) for your personal workflow.

While each framework has its unique emphasis and vocabulary (also acronyms, so many acronyms), they're remarkably similar under the hood. Strip away the jargon and they all give you tools to solve the same everyday business challenges:

• Regular meeting cadences that actually accomplish something

• Clear accountability mechanisms that eliminate ambiguity

• Reporting rhythms that catch issues before they become crises

• Decision-making protocols that prevent endless deliberation

• Simple goals that get everyone on the (ahem) same page

As a builder, your instinct might be to create your own unique system from scratch, but these frameworks aren't valuable because they're original—they're valuable because they work. They represent thousands of business experiments where someone else already made the mistakes for you. They've figured out what works, thrown away what doesn't, and packaged those lessons into systems you can use today.

You could spend years developing your own methods through painful trial and error, or you could just use what others have already figured out. Borrowing proven solutions is simply more efficient than reinventing basic business mechanics.

You will get pushback

When implementing any system, expect resistance. Your creatives will complain about "corporate bureaucracy." Your technicians will argue they need more flexibility. Even (especially?) your leadership team might bristle at the discipline required.

This pushback often reveals exactly why you need the framework in the first place.

The loudest objections typically come from those who regularly create chaos through their "unique" approaches to basic business functions: The designer who misses deadlines refusing to use project management tools. The executive who derails meetings with monologues objecting to strict agendas. The sales rep who never documents conversations insisting they don't need a follow-up system.

We resist most what we need most.

At King of Pops, our most vocal EOS critics were precisely those whose work frequently created bottlenecks. The strongest defenders of our “make it up as we go” philosophy were often the first to flounder when left without clear direction.

When you face resistance, be direct: "The system isn't to limit you—it's to stop us from solving the same problems over and over." If they remain unconvinced, you’ll need the backbone to do something about it. Sometimes the strongest resistors simply aren't a fit for where your business needs to go.

Commit now, customize later

If you've ever tried implementing David Allen's GTD methodology, you know it can feel obsessively prescriptive—specific folder structures, exact workflows, precise review schedules. It's the poster child for rigid systems. But at the very end of his book, Allen himself admits that as you mature with his method, you'll naturally adapt it and use it more flexibly rather than following it to the letter.

The key is balancing strict implementation at first with flexibility later. At King of Pops, we eventually modified EOS to match our culture—but only after living with the pure system long enough to understand why each element existed.

I recommend running a new system by the book for at least three months. Feel uncomfortable. Let the system expose your weak spots. Then you can start making it your own, while preserving what makes it effective.

The best systems are adaptable, but adaptation only works when you've mastered the fundamentals first.

The hidden cost of winging It

The real pain isn't adopting a new system to run your business—it's the endless hours spent reinventing the same basic processes week after week. How many days has your team wasted debating meeting agendas? How many projects have stalled due to unclear accountability? How many times have you resolved the same issue?

This is time stolen from your actual expertise. Your clients aren't paying you to design meeting protocols; they're paying for your specialized knowledge and products.

Choose a system. Implement it thoroughly. Modify it intelligently.

And then get back to the work that actually matters.