Jones Metal has been building precision metal components in Mankato since 1942. In this testimonial, Sarah Richards, President and CEO, shares what it takes to lead a multi-generation manufacturing company while continuing to grow, innovate, and stay aligned as a team.

She reflects on the importance of clarity, accountability, and long-term thinking, and how EOS has helped provide structure, focus, and momentum across the organization.

What follows is Sarah’s perspective, in her own words, on putting a long-established company on a clear forward path.

My name is Sarah Richards, and I’m the president and CEO of Jones Metal here in Mankato.

We’ve been in business since 1942. The company was started by our maternal grandmother, Mildred Jones. We fabricate metal parts for other original equipment manufacturers.

I always feel like if you’re not growing, you’re shrinking, and you have to be innovative to continue to grow an old company like this one.

EOS provides a powerful, directional, consistent tool for you to put yourself on a culturally and strategically solid path, and people want to work for companies like that.

I think the best part about EOS is that it focuses on 10-year, three-year, one-year, 90-day, and one-week planning in terms of how you plan out your future. It also keeps a lot of the noise, a lot of the firefighting, and a lot of the chaos at bay.

You fight the same fires over and over again. EOS Traction helps you tackle those issues, deal with them, and move on.

We’re all accountable for something every week. In the first six months when my team first started implementing EOS, we accomplished over 300 to-dos that were nagging at us. That’s the kind of accountability that it adds for all of us, and it really helps your company grow.

It also focuses heavily on having the right people in the right seats in your company. It just adds clarity to what you’re really trying to do, and it allows you to get so much done.

Our implementer is Joe Paulson. What I really like about Joe is that when he’s implementing our Focus Days, our quarterly check-ins, and our annual meetings, he’s focused on providing us tools and a pathway to find our way. He’s really facilitating what we already have here at Jones.

I get to participate just as much as everybody else. When you’re the CEO of a company, your job is to be the visionary, and there’s nothing more powerful than a leader who is vulnerable while they’re accountable. This Traction program really enforces that.

We can’t stop doing this because it has put this old company on a forward-moving path, and everybody enjoys that. We’ve had a lot of fun.

Basically, it puts everyone on notice that we have to be profitable, we have to grow, here’s how we’re going to do it.