UK and Ireland, 2027
The EOS Business Study
The first study of the businesses running EOS in the UK and Ireland. How it gets put in, how far it spreads, what becomes habit, what quietly fades, and what makes the difference between the two.
The theory is well covered. EOS Worldwide provides the tools, the books, the videos and the training, and they set out clearly how it is all meant to work. What nobody has documented is what happens when a real business tries to live it.
There is remarkably little evidence either way. The most substantial piece of research the EOS world has is a 2026 study by Success.co of 97 EOS Implementers across 25 countries, about their own profession. Nobody has asked the businesses. EOS Worldwide's own published adoption figures range from 100,000 to 200,000 companies depending which source you read, and there is no UK or Ireland breakdown at all.
Meanwhile the experience varies enormously. Some businesses get there with a Certified Implementer. Some work it out from the book. Some start one way and finish another. In some, it never travels beyond the leadership team; in others, every department is running its own Rocks within a year. Eighteen months in, one business has a rhythm nobody would think of dropping, and another has a V/TO in a drawer and a scorecard last updated in April. What separates them has never been established.
This study sets out to find out, from the businesses living it. It runs from October 2026 to February 2027, and the report is published in spring 2027.
Who it is for
You are the right person to take part if your business is in the UK or Ireland, has more than one person in it, has run or attempted to run on EOS, and you sit on the leadership team.
How you got there does not matter. Certified Implementer, self-implemented from Traction, an internal hire who had done it before, or some combination: all of it counts, and the differences between those routes are part of what the study is looking at.
Size does not matter either, and small businesses are particularly wanted. EOS is usually described as being for companies of ten people upwards, but plenty of smaller businesses are running it, mostly by implementing it themselves, and nobody has looked at how that goes. If you started putting the structure in at four people and grew into it, this study wants your answer more than most.
EOS Implementers are welcome to take part as well, answering about your own business, the one you run, rather than about your clients. What you see across client engagements matters a great deal and is being gathered separately, through interviews, where it can be given the room it needs.
It matters that the study hears from businesses where it stopped as much as from those still running it. If EOS did not work for you, or quietly faded out, this research needs your answers more than anyone's. Those are the experiences nobody writes up, and they are the reason it exists.
The one group this cannot include is people running a business on their own. EOS is a system for how a team works together, so with no team there is nothing to report on.
How to take part
Four quick questions below establish whether your business is in scope. If it is, the questionnaire opens straight away and takes about ten minutes. Your answers are anonymous and reported only in aggregate.
The scope is fixed and applies to everyone equally. Nobody is chosen or excluded on the basis of what they might say, and nothing you answer in the questionnaire itself affects whether your response is used.
Who is running it
This study is run by Sylvie Cowell of Cowell & Co. I work as a Fractional Integrator for EOS businesses, most of them founder-led, and I am a regional chair of the EOS UK Users Community, based in the West Midlands.
That means I am not a neutral outsider. I work inside the thing I am studying, and part of what this research asks about is the same ground I work on. It does not make the findings unreliable, but you should know where they came from.
So the questionnaire was built to be capable of contradicting me. No question asks you to agree with a proposition, and any finding that runs against what I do for a living will be reported in full. If there is one, it will lead the report. Before launch, the questionnaire was reviewed by Pippa Tait, a fractional Sales Director working outside the EOS world, who read it for leading or loaded wording, and by Dave Abraham, a regional chair of the EOS UK Users Community, who read it as a practitioner.
There is no sales follow-up attached to any of this. Taking part does not put you on a list, and nothing you say will be used to sell you anything.
This is independent research. I am not a Certified or Professional EOS Implementer, and the study is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by EOS Worldwide.
What you get
Everyone who takes part receives the full report before it is published. No charge, and no sales follow-up attached to it.
There is also a confidential 45-minute conversation about your own experience. Around twenty-five businesses will be included.
Both are arranged at the end. When you finish the questionnaire you can leave an email address and choose the report, the conversation, or both. Nothing is collected before that point, and your answers stay anonymous either way.
Your data
Questionnaire responses are anonymous. It asks nothing that identifies you or your business, and no contact details are collected before or during it. If you choose to leave an email at the end, for the report or an interview, it is stored separately and cannot be matched to your answers.
Nothing is attributed to you or your business without your written permission, and if you are quoted you will see the exact wording in context before publication. Taking part is voluntary and you can stop at any point. Contact details are deleted twelve months after the report is published.
Cowell & Co is the data controller for this study. Questions or withdrawal requests: sylvie@cowellandco.co.uk
Four quick questions first, and the questionnaire opens straight away.
Take part
Four questions to check if the study is the right fit.
For EOS Implementers
Are you an EOS Implementer?
Two things would help enormously, and they are separate.
First, take part yourself, answering about the business you run. The questions are the same for everyone.
Second, a conversation: 45 minutes on what you see happen across client engagements. That is a different kind of evidence and it is being gathered through interviews rather than through the questionnaire, because it needs the room.
And if you would send this page to businesses who should take part, that is the single most useful thing anyone can do. Clients past as well as present, and past especially: the ones that drifted away from EOS are what this study most needs to hear about, and you are the only route to them. Nothing they say comes back to you, and nothing is attributed.