Yesterday we held our second Traction/EOS “away day” in Birmingham.
Present were:
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Me (Robin, CEO)
Catherine, our Customer Success Manager
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Jack, CTO
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Dan, Development Manager
No inbox distractions. No “just a quick call”. Just a room, a screen, notebooks… and some properly big thinking.
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| Jack, Dan, Catherine and my empty chair! |
Why We Do Traction Days
We follow the principles in Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman. It’s not fluffy strategy. It’s structured, practical and occasionally uncomfortable.
And that’s exactly why it works.
Our away days are designed to pull us out of day-to-day delivery mode and force us to answer questions like:
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Where are we actually going?
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What does success look like in 12 months?
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In 3 years?
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In 10?
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Do the right people own the right things?
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Are we building the team we’ll need — not just the team we have?
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| Traction and a glass of gin/water |
Setting Our 1-Year, 3-Year and 10-Year Targets
The 10-year conversation is always my favourite.
It stretches thinking. It removes artificial limits. It forces us to ask what Start Software and Alpha Tracker could genuinely become if we execute well, stay focused and keep improving.
From there, we worked backwards:
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What must be true in 3 years to make that 10-year vision inevitable?
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What absolutely has to happen in the next 12 months to stay on track?
This isn’t about vague ambition. It’s about clarity.
Revenue targets. Product development priorities. Market positioning. Team structure. Delivery standards. Everything gets put under the microscope.
And sometimes rewritten.
Reviewing Our Accountability Chart
One of the most valuable parts of the day was reviewing our staff accountability chart.
Not a traditional org chart. An accountability chart.
There’s a big difference.
It forces us to define:
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Who owns what.
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Where responsibilities overlap.
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Where there are gaps.
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Whether someone truly “gets it, wants it and has the capacity to do it”.
These conversations are constructive, but they’re honest. If we want to grow sustainably, clarity beats comfort every time.
We also reviewed development needs — not just technical capability, but leadership growth, communication and decision-making maturity.
If we want a 10-year vision to become reality, we have to grow as individuals at the same rate as the business.
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| Our first time at St Paul's Suite in Birmingham, a great venue |
Why Away Days Matter
It would be easy to skip days like this.
There’s always client work to deliver. Always features to build. Always improvements to make.
But without stepping back, you drift.
With structured planning, you steer.
This was our second Traction away day. The conversations were sharper than the first. The thinking was clearer. The ambition was bigger.
And that’s exactly how it should be.
Onwards.
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