EOS® Implementer in Burbank and Glendale

Where the Valley meets the city

Burbank and Glendale sit where the Valley meets the rest of Los Angeles, and the business mix shows it. Burbank is the media town most people never see: the studios, and around them hundreds of production, post-production, equipment and service companies. Glendale adds finance, insurance, healthcare and a deep base of family-owned businesses. Toluca Lake and Studio City fill in with production companies, agencies and professional firms that want to be near the lots.

There is an aerospace thread that runs back decades in Burbank, and some of the machine shops and suppliers that grew up around it are still part of the local economy. The trades are here too. The Southern California HVAC trade association, IHACI, holds its trade show at the Pasadena Convention Center, a short drive east.

And there is technology. I work with a managed-services client in Burbank. The pattern in that kind of company is common across this end of the Valley: skilled people, a founder who built the service with their own hands, and growth that outran the structure.

Production companies and EOS

Production and post houses have a shape EOS fits well, and owners rarely name it. Work arrives as projects. Each project has its own team, its own budget and its own crisis. The company itself, the part that sells, staffs, bids and gets paid, gets run in the gaps between projects by whoever has a minute.

EOS separates running the projects from running the company. The Accountability Chart gives sales, operations and finance one owner each, so the company has leaders even in the middle of a big job. The Scorecard tracks bids, backlog, utilization and cash every week, so a slow quarter shows up months before it lands. Rocks keep the company improving during the busy season instead of only in the quiet ones, which in this business may never come.

The other pattern is the key person. In a post house it is often the editor or colorist whose name the clients ask for, and who is also, somehow, running the schedule. EOS does not ask that person to be less talented. It asks the company to stop routing operations through their inbox.

Scheduled a quarter ahead

A session calendar set a quarter in advance is one reason EOS survives busy seasons. The quarterly day is on the books before the next job lands. The weekly meeting keeps running whatever the production schedule looks like, and after a few months the team stops treating it as optional.

Industry guide: EOS® for Staffing and Recruiting Firms in Los Angeles