Case Study: Matt Sluter and New England Construction
Today, I’d like you to meet our client Matt Sluter, President and CEO of New England Construction in Rhode Island. Matt has been working with our firm for 3 years, and his company has seen major growth in that time.
Here’s Matt:
Intro to EOS
I first heard about EOS through my CEO peer group--Vistage. At the time, our company was growing rapidly, and we knew we needed to focus on growing methodically. I had just completed OPM at Harvard Business School and was focused on working "on the business rather than just "in" the business.
EOS was the first program that packaged those strategic ideas in a way that could be rolled out throughout my organization. Growing a business isn’t something you can just take out of a book. EOS is the closest thing to putting all aspects of managing a growing company in a “box”—in an organized, presentable way that makes sense to your senior leaders and the entire business.
Onboarding EOS
I connected with Eric in November of 2017, and we began working with him immediately. From our first meeting, he earned the respect, trust, and company buy-in that’s so crucial to using this system.
Eric’s style is direct. EOS is direct. When you’re running a business, open and honest transparency is key to building meaningful and enduring relationships with employees and clients. EOS quickly resonated with our Senior Leadership Team.
Once we started EOS, organizational and individual goal-setting became tremendously more effective (no more competing initiatives). We articulated a clear vision detailing where we wanted to go, and we set goals each quarter that held us accountable to achieving our larger vision.
Before EOS, I can’t say that each individual employee understood how their actions and goals impacted the bottom line of the company. EOS is a platform that enables the team to understand why new initiatives are put into place. It’s helped us become more accountable to each other and to the organization at large.
We are much stronger together. EOS helps identify root causes to issues—whether it’s workload, reporting or process-related. We catch issues before they become problems.
Favorite EOS Tool: The V/TO
The Vision/Traction Organizer (V/TO) forced us to define where our company was, what made us different from our competitors, what was most important to us, what our goals were, and how to move the needle on those goals. This one tool was incredibly helpful as we created and rolled out different initiatives.
Biggest EOS Challenge: Putting Core Values in Writing
My biggest challenge with EOS was discomfort with putting our core values in writing: it initially felt hokey to me. I didn’t see why I needed to write our values down when I already understood and lived them.
I now know that documenting our core values is how I communicate those values to our team. Now we all share the same values, and they’re a great reference point when discussing decisions with my employees. It’s an incredible measuring tool too. We rely heavily on our core values when evaluating employee performance and hiring new team members.
Results with EOS
Our business was growing organically when we started working with Eric, but the growth wasn’t strategic. EOS helped us control our growth and decide what we wanted it to look like.
EOS also engaged us to set clear goals for revenue and profitability. We now create initiatives that tie specifically to our bottom line, and we directly link quarterly measurables to profitability. We can clearly see how our initiatives help the bottom line (or not).
Our numbers back that up. In the 2.5 years since we’ve been using EOS, we’ve increased our revenue by 50% and doubled our profitability.
Why EOS
Like many other CEOs, I’ve tried just about everything to organize my business. EOS takes everything you want from a high-powered consultant, strategic plan, or retreat, and puts it all neatly into a box. And when you add an EOS Implementer like Eric—who’s an entrepreneur and business owner himself—it can change your entire trajectory
