Do They Get It?

On a call last week with a specialist in EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), we were discussing having the right people in the right seats, and the facilitator dropped an acronym on us: GWC. He explained GWC is a tool that requires you to ask three questions about the people on your team: 

Do they get it?
Do they want it? 
Do they have the capacity? 

“Wanting it” is essentially enrollment, something Seth Godin has painted a clear picture of for me over the past few years. You can dig into his blog or podcast for deep dives but this nugget will get you going: 

When we’re actively enrolled in a journey, it’s on us. That’s the requirement once you choose to act professionally. You know the terms, the dates, the structure. It wasn’t even fine print. It’s simply the structure you agreed to be part of. 

Of course, enrollment is frightening. Because enrollment confers responsibility. “This is something I’m choosing to do.”

Having the capacity to do a given task seems cut and dry although I’ve definitely been guilty of trying to shoehorn people into roles that they simply don’t have the chops for because, well, mostly because I liked them or I felt like they deserved to advance in some way. Of course, this isn’t fair to them, the organization, or myself. 

But it was the “G” that struck me. Do they get it? Do they have that natural intuition for the role? It felt like a question I’d always wanted to ask but never did because I had no way of quantifying an answer. Even something like values alignment falls short of this gut-level feeling. 

I’m not sure quite sure I’m defining “Get it” in the way that the EOS system is using it, nor can I attest to the quality of the EOS system itself, but the call did help me name something that I deeply desire: to work with people who get it, and pushed me to quantify what getting it even means. From the perspective of a business owner, I'd say someone who gets it consistently and naturally produces work that lines up with or improves upon the vision you see in your head. And with people who get it, even when the work is hard, the process is enjoyable.