How to Use Ninety's V/TO® Tool

The Vision Component® is the first of the Six Key Components® of EOS® (Entrepreneurial Operating System®). Its purpose is straightforward: get every member of your organization 100% on the same page about where you're going and how you plan to get there. 

The tool EOS uses to accomplish that is the Vision/Traction Organizer® (V/TO®), a focused, two-page document that answers eight questions about your company's identity and direction. 

Ninety's V/TO tool brings that document to life for every team in your organization, keeping it current, accessible, and connected to the weekly work happening across your tools. Read a Professional EOS Implementer's complete walkthrough of the V/TO here.

What is the V/TO tool?

The V/TO tool is where your organization documents and shares its Vision and strategic plan. It has three pages: Vision, Traction®, and SWOT. Every team in your Ninety account has its own V/TO (except Project Teams), so each part of the organization can document goals and priorities that reflect both the company's overall direction and its own team's contribution to it.

The Vision and Traction® pages are available to all subscription levels, including Free. The SWOT page is available on paid plans. The Custom V/TO® feature, which lets leadership customize the layout and sections of the tool, is available on paid plans and must be enabled by an Owner, Admin, or Implementer/Coach.

What's in the V/TO tool

Ninety's V/TO web tool has three pages, accessible by tabs at the top of the page.

Vision page

The Vision page captures your organization's long-term identity. It answers the first five of The 8 Questions™ in the EOS framework:

• Core Values: The three to seven guiding principles that define your culture and the behaviors you expect from everyone in the organization.
• Core Focus™: Your Purpose/Cause/Passion (why your organization exists) and your Niche (what you do and for whom).
• 10-Year Target™: A bold, specific destination that unites your team around where the company is headed over the long haul.
• Marketing Strategy: Your Target Market, 3 Uniques™, Proven Process, and Guarantee.
• 3-Year Picture™: A vivid, concrete picture of what the organization will look like in three years, including revenue, profit, and key Measurables.

Traction® page

The Traction® page is where long-range vision becomes near-term execution. It answers the final three of The 8 Questions™:

• 1-Year Plan: Your revenue and profit targets and three to seven goals for the year.
• 90 Days (Rocks): Company and departmental Rocks auto-populate here from the Rocks tool, showing this quarter's priorities alongside the financial targets and Measurables for the period.
• Long-Term Issues: Issues your team isn't ready to address this quarter. These mirror directly from the Issues tool and are reviewed at every quarterly and annual session.

SWOT page

The SWOT page is a supplemental resource that helps your leadership team perform a structured analysis of your organization's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. While the SWOT isn't a canonical section of the V/TO® itself, it's closely related to the annual and quarterly planning process, which is why it lives alongside the Vision and Traction® pages in Ninety. Any SWOT item can be converted to a short-term Issue or a To-Do directly from this page. Read Ninety's guide to the SWOT analysis here.

How the V/TO tool connects to other tools

Rocks. Company and departmental Rocks auto-populate on the Traction® page's 90-Day World section. The V/TO is where those quarterly goals connect back to a longer arc: the 1-Year Plan, the 3-Year Picture, and the 10-Year Target. Teams that update their Rocks tool are always reflected in the V/TO without any manual entry.

Issues. Long-Term Issues from the Issues tool mirror automatically to the Traction® page. Any Issue flagged as long-term appears here, giving leadership a running view of what the organization isn't ready to tackle this quarter. During quarterly and annual sessions, these Issues are reviewed to determine which ones should become Rocks or remain on the list.

Meetings. The V/TO is reviewed at every quarterly session and annual planning session. When a team starts a quarterly or annual meeting in Ninety, a copy of the V/TO® is automatically archived so the prior version is preserved. The Meetings tool includes pre-built agendas for both session types that include V/TO review steps.

Scorecard. The revenue targets, profit goals, and Measurables documented in the V/TO's 1-Year Plan and 3-Year Picture provide the benchmarks that the Scorecard tracks weekly. Teams use these planning markers to set Measurable goals and evaluate whether weekly data is trending toward the right outcomes.

Accountability Chart. Core Values defined in the Vision page are the foundation for the People Component® of EOS — specifically, identifying whether you have the Right People in your Seats. The Accountability Chart gives structure to the roles and responsibilities needed to execute the Vision, while the V/TO establishes what that Vision is.

1-on-1. During quarterly 1-on-1 conversations, managers review team members' alignment with the company's Core Values and their individual contribution to quarterly goals. The V/TO is the reference document for both.

Cascading the V/TO across the organization

Every team in Ninety has its own V/TO, which means department and project teams can document goals and priorities tailored to their work. At the same time, the leadership team's V/TO serves as the source of truth for the entire organization. Ninety gives the leadership team control over how much of their V/TO is visible to other teams.

Share V/TO® with All Teams is a toggle available on the Leadership Team's V/TO page. When enabled, every other team in the organization can click View Leadership V/TO to see the leadership team's Vision and goals instead of their own. Sections that have been cascaded display a Leadership flag and cannot be edited by individual teams (any changes must be made at the Leadership Team level).

Teams can still view their own V/TO alongside the cascaded sections if the View Leadership V/TO toggle is turned off.

Long-Term Issues follow a different rule. Because leadership Issues are often sensitive, they are private by default even when the V/TO is shared. Each Long-Term Issue must be individually marked Public using the Public Issue toggle in the Issue's details panel before it becomes visible to other teams viewing the Leadership V/TO.

SWOT follows the same cascading behavior as the rest of the V/TO: when the leadership team shares their V/TO, the SWOT content is included.

User roles and permissions overview

• Leadership Team V/TO. Only Owners and Admins can edit the Leadership Team's Vision, Traction®, and SWOT pages. Managers on the Leadership Team can view the pages but cannot edit them.
• All other teams' V/TOs. Users with the Manager role or higher can edit their team's Vision, Traction®, and SWOT pages.
• Custom V/TO® layout. Only Owners, Admins, or Implementers/Coaches who are members of the Leadership Team can enable or disable the Custom Vision setting in Company Settings. Once enabled, the Edit Layout button becomes available to all Leadership Team members.
• Observers. Can view any V/TO page they have team access to. Cannot edit any section.

For a full breakdown of what each role can do across all tools, see User Roles and Permissions.

What's in Ninety's V/TO tool

Navigating the V/TO® Tool: Learn how to switch between teams, use the Share V/TO® toggle, access the Leadership Team's vision from a department team page, and use the Archive.

Documenting Your Company or Team Vision: How to edit the Vision page sections (Core Values, Core Focus™, 10-Year Target™, 3-Year Picture™, and Go to Market Strategy) and how to rearrange the page layout.

Creating and Documenting Goals on the Traction® Page: How to add 1-Year Goals, edit Traction® page sections, rearrange the page layout, and work with the Long-Term Issues section, including how to make a leadership Issue public.

Record Your Team's SWOT Analysis: How to add, edit, and reorder items in each SWOT quadrant, and how to convert any SWOT item into an Issue or To-Do.

Display the Organization's Vision across All Teams: Step-by-step instructions for sharing the Leadership Team's V/TO with all teams, choosing which sections to cascade, and managing Long-Term Issue visibility.

Custom V/TO® Feature: How to enable the Custom Vision setting in Company Settings, rearrange and resize sections with Edit Layout, and create new custom sections on either the Vision or Traction® page.

Archiving the V/TO®: How to manually archive a copy of your current V/TO and how to view and navigate archived versions from previous quarters.

Exporting a Quarterly Report: Generate a PDF report that includes your team's Scorecard data, Rocks, V/TO, SWOT, Long-Term Issues, and Accountability Chart — useful for quarterly and annual planning sessions.

Printing and Exporting Your V/TO® to PDF: Export a standalone PDF of your V/TO®, Traction®, and SWOT pages for printing or sharing outside of Ninety. Note: when Custom Vision is enabled, the PDF renders in a flexible list format rather than the classic two-page EOS layout. To generate the standard EOS-style PDF, temporarily disable Custom Vision in Company Settings, export the PDF, then re-enable it.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between the Vision side and the Traction® side of the V/TO? The Vision side of the V/TO answers five questions about who your organization is and where it's going: Core Values, Core Focus, 10-Year Target, Marketing Strategy, and 3-Year Picture. These are about identity and long-range direction. The Traction® side answers three questions about how you'll get there over the near term: your 1-Year Plan, this quarter's Rocks, and your Long-Term Issues. In EOS, Vision without Traction is just a wish list; Traction without Vision is just activity. The V/TO holds both together.

Can every team have their own V/TO, or is it just for the leadership team? Every team has its own V/TO, except Project Teams, which are not assigned a V/TO by design. Department teams can document their own Vision sections, set team-specific goals on their Traction® page, and maintain their own Long-Term Issues list. The leadership team controls how much of its V/TO is cascaded and visible to other teams.

Where do Long-Term Issues come from on the Traction® page? The Long-Term Issues section of the Traction® page is a live mirror of your team's long-term Issues list from the Issues tool. Any Issue flagged as long-term in the Issues tool automatically appears here. You can add new Issues, update existing ones, and assign priority values from either the Traction® page or the Issues tool — changes are reflected in both places.

When is the V/TO automatically archived? A copy of the V/TO® is automatically archived when a team starts a Quarterly Session or Annual Planning Session in the Meetings tool. You can also manually archive at any time by clicking Archive > Archive a copy of this Vision from the V/TO tool. Note that the SWOT page does not currently save to archived versions.

Who can edit the leadership team's V/TO? Only Owners and Admins can edit the Leadership Team's Vision, Traction®, and SWOT pages. This is a stricter permission than other teams, where Managers can also edit. If you need to update the leadership V/TO and don't have access, contact your company's Owner or Admin to either make the edit or adjust your role.

What's the Custom V/TO® feature, and who can enable it? The Custom V/TO® feature lets your organization reorganize, resize, and add new sections to the Vision and Traction® pages to match your company's terminology and structure. It must be enabled in Company Settings by an Owner, Admin, or Implementer/Coach who is a member of the Leadership Team. It's a company-wide setting. Once enabled, all Leadership Team members see the Edit Layout button on both the Vision and Traction® tabs. Custom V/TO is available on paid subscription plans.

Learn more

EOS® Vision/Traction Organizer® (V/TO®): How to Align Vision and Traction: A Professional EOS Implementer's complete walkthrough of all eight V/TO questions, with guidance on how to answer each one and how the Vision and Traction sides work together to create alignment.

EOS Vision: The 8 Questions That Drive Business Clarity: A practitioner's breakdown of each of The 8 Questions™, including how leadership teams work through them during Vision Building Days and what strong answers look like in practice.

How to Future-Proof Your Business with EOS Vision: Explains why the V/TO works best as a living document reviewed every quarter (not a one-time exercise), and how consistent review keeps the Vision connected to daily execution.

EOS Core Focus: Five Strategies to Stay Aligned as You Scale: A deep dive into the Core Focus™ section of the Vision page, including how to use it as a filter for decisions and how to keep it activated across the organization as it grows.