Rip can name the exact point in an annual season where his work stopped being good: the third client of the week, when he wasn't attentive, was short tempered, and lectured instead of guiding.
For years he treated that as a character problem. It was a scheduling one, and the fix starts with counting how many annuals cluster in any single week between November and February, done in summer before clients lock their calendars.
Most clients can move and don't know it, because EOS® runs on a quarterly rhythm that owes nothing to a fiscal year. Rip gives the exact words he used, including the line that makes a no cost them nothing.
Nobody pushed back. They shrugged and said they could do that, because they're anxious for him to be effective in a room they invited him into.
Blocking days deliberately, before the annuals go in, is the second half of the fix. What a heavy season costs the client isn't Rip's presence, it's his patience.
I can tell you the exact point in an annual season where I stopped doing good work: it was the third client of the week.
I was still walking into the room, still standing at the front, still running the agenda. But I was very ineffective by then, and I did not need anybody to tell me. I was not attentive to what they were saying, pretty short tempered, and tended to lecture in an obnoxious way.
For a long time I treated that as a personal failing, something to fix with more resolve and better recovery. It was a scheduling problem the whole time.
What follows is what I actually did about it, including the words I used with clients, because that is the part everybody asks me for and the part nobody wants to improvise.
Start with the arithmetic, not with your stamina
A two-day annual takes two full days of your best attention. Three in a week means six days of work, and the third one lands on Friday and Saturday, at the very end of everything you have.
I levelled off at 20 to 25 clients and stayed there for a number of years. That is a healthy practice. It is also the point at which the annual season stops being something you manage and becomes something that happens to you, because every client whose fiscal year matches the calendar wants their annual in the same eight weeks.
So before you do anything else, go and count.
Pull up the window from November through February and count how many annuals are sitting in it. Then look at how they cluster: what matters is not the total, it is how many land in any single week. If the answer is three, you already know how the third one is going to go, because it goes that way for everyone.
Do this in the summer. I was talking recently with an Implementer who is already thinking about the season coming this fall, and he knows he will be working many weeks, five days or six. He is doing the right thing by looking at it now, because by October the clients have their own calendars locked and you are negotiating against everybody else's quarter.
Work out which annuals can move
Not every client can move, but most can, and they do not know it.
The reason is simple and it is worth being precise about when you raise it. The way we teach EOS®, it is a quarterly rhythm. It does not have to be tied to a fiscal year or a calendar year: the 90-day pulse works from wherever you start it.
Plenty of leadership teams have never questioned why their annual sits in January. It is there because that is when they happened to start, or because January feels like the beginning of things. When you ask, some of them will realise it themselves before you finish the sentence.
The exception is the team that is hardwired to the calendar year because it is also their fiscal year. I had one of those, and I did not push. That client is not the problem, but three of that client in the same week is the problem, and you only need a handful to move to fix it.
Several of mine went to June, July, August and September. Those months are not better in themselves, they are just empty, which is the whole point.
What to say, and why each part of it is there
This is the conversation people build up in their heads. I want to give you the shape of it, because when I finally had it, it was far more ordinary than I had expected.
Start by telling them the truth about your calendar. I said that if they kept their annual in the winter, I would be in a position where I would be working constantly with a whole series of clients, and I was really concerned I was not going to be as effective for them as I should be.
Notice what that does: it does not open with a request, it opens with a consequence that lands on them.
Then explain that this is not personal to them. I said I was approaching them and a number of other clients with the same question, and that matters more than it looks. It tells them they have not been singled out as the difficult client, and it signals that you are reorganising a season rather than solving one awkward booking.
Give them the permission that makes it possible. This is where you say that the way we teach EOS is in a quarterly rhythm, and it does not have to be tied to a fiscal year or a calendar year. Without that sentence, moving the annual feels to them like breaking the method. With it, it is just a date.
Make the ask, and make it plainly. “If you feel you can move yours, I would be grateful if you would, because I want to be effective for you and I don't want to be worn out. If you can't, I'm going to be seeking that from others.”
Two things are working there. You have said out loud that you do not want to be worn out, which is a human statement and not a professional weakness. And you have given them a no that costs them nothing, because you have already told them you are asking other people. A request that is easy to decline is much easier to accept.
Finish with what exhaustion actually costs them. This is the part I would not skip: I told them that I have learned that if I get exhausted I am not effective, I am not hearing everything, and I tend to be more of a lecturer than a teacher and a guide and a coach, which is less effective for them.
That is specific, and specificity is what makes it credible. Anyone can say they would be tired. Naming exactly which parts of your work degrade first tells them you have thought about their session and not just your schedule.
Why they say yes
I expected resistance, I did not get any. They shrugged their shoulders and said, we can do that. Sure. What difference does that make?
The reason is something we lose sight of when we are worried about looking unprofessional.
This is a trusted advisor relationship: they invited you into the room because they want you in the room. They genuinely want to learn from you, they want you to hold them accountable, and they want to get better at what they do. But they are anxious for you to be effective, and do not want to pay your fee and have you be only half engaged.
Once you see it that way, asking to move an annual stops being a favour you are requesting and becomes you protecting the thing they are paying for. The response I got was cooperative and supportive, and I think it was cooperative because the ask was obviously in their interest as well as mine.
Block the days before the clients get there
Moving annuals thins the season. It does not empty it, and it should not. The second move is the one that keeps the thinner season from quietly refilling.
Even in the intense part of the year, at year end and early in the new year, I had to deliberately put several days in a row on my calendar where I was not going to work.
The word that matters there is deliberately. Not the days that happen to be left over, but days you place first, before anything else goes in.
Then you have to defend them, and defending them has a price. If holding those days meant pushing a client's annual from the second week of January to the fourth week of January, or into the first week of February, then that is what I did. That is an uncomfortable email to send, and it is the entire mechanism. Rest that only exists in the gaps is not protected, because a season like this does not leave gaps.
The part of the job that goes first
There is a reason I put "I did not patiently reteach" in that list of what happens to me by the third client, and it is worth pulling out, because it is the piece of the work most likely to disappear when you are running on empty.
One thing we have learned, and Gino learned it long before the rest of us were ever considered as Implementers, is that if you really follow this particular set of management practices with consistency, and you use the tools consistently the way you are taught to use them, you will achieve better results.
And yet it has been hard for clients over the years to do that: they get distracted, they wander off the page. And that is not because they are careless, but because a business generates enough noise to pull anyone off a discipline.
I was recently with a client I have had for seven years, and I had to reteach them, for the fifteenth time, how to run a Level 10 Meeting™. There was nothing new revealed to them going through the tool, they do know how to run a Level 10 Meeting.
What they needed was to be reminded of the importance of sticking with the disciplines.
That is the job. Not the first explanation, the fifteenth one, delivered with the same patience as the first.
Now think about what that requires of you, and what happens to it when you are on your sixth working day of the week. Patient reteaching is the highest-energy thing an Implementer does, and it is the thing that quietly converts into lecturing when you have nothing left. You will still cover the material. It will land as impatience rather than as guidance, and the client will hear that you think they should already know this, which is the precise opposite of what makes a reminder work.
So when I say a heavy season costs the client something, this is the specific thing it costs them. Not your presence, but your patience.
What goes wrong
Waiting until the season is already booked. By the time three annuals are sitting in one week, every fix is a rescheduling conversation instead of a planning one. Run the count in summer.
Asking for the move without naming the cost to them. If you only say that you will be tired, you have made it about you, and a client who likes you will still say yes but will not really understand why. Tell them what stops working in the room.
Dressing it up. I did not spin this or build a client-benefit story around it. I said what was true, which happened to also be the client's benefit. Anything more polished than that invites them to look for the real reason.
Treating the calendar block as a nice idea. If the days are not on the calendar before the annuals are, they will not exist. And if you will not move a session to protect them, they will not survive contact with December.
Assuming a no means the conversation failed. One of my clients could not move, and that was fine. You do not need everyone. You need enough of them that no week has a third client in it.
Fixing the season and leaving the practice unchanged. If you are consistently at capacity, moving annuals buys you room but does not answer why every week is full. That is a different conversation, and it is worth having separately.
What you get
You get a season you can run at full attention, which means the third client of the week gets the same Implementer as the first one.
You get days in the middle of the heaviest stretch of the year that are genuinely yours, because you put them there before anyone else could.
And you get something less obvious. You have modelled, in front of a leadership team, the exact behaviour you spend every quarter asking them to adopt. You looked at your own capacity honestly, identified the issue, and solved it rather than putting duct tape over it for another year.
I did not enjoy discovering that the fix was this ordinary. I had spent a long time treating it as a question of character. It was a calendar.
