The promise is seductive: Implement the right operating system and your frustrations disappear. Your employees become more accountable. Communication improves. Growth follows. Your business finally runs the way you always hoped it would. That's the promise behind EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System popularized by Gino Wickman's book Traction. Plenty of business owners swear by it. Plenty have spent tens of thousands of dollars hiring EOS implementers to help put it in place. But does it work?

This week, we’re republishing one of our favorite conversations, one in which Shawn Busse, Paul Downs, and Laura Zander compare notes on their own experiences with EOS. Laura hired an implementer and spent years trying to make the system work. Paul took a more selective, do-it-yourself approach. Shawn has watched EOS play out inside numerous client companies. What emerges is a much more nuanced picture than the one promised in the book. The three owners discuss when EOS can be genuinely valuable, when it's the wrong tool for the job, and why no operating system can compensate for having the wrong people in key roles. As Laura puts it, EOS can be incredibly helpful "for people like me 10 years ago, who just don't know what they're doing." The question is whether that's enough to justify the investment.