How to Identify Your Core Processes

By Lisa González, Certified EOS Implementer® and co-author of Process! (The EOS Mastery Series). Updated June 10, 2026.

Every business runs on six to ten core processes: the handful of ways your company attracts customers, delivers work, manages money, and takes care of people. Identifying them is the first step of the EOS® 3-Step Process Documenter, and it is where most teams get stuck. Here is how to do it in one leadership team session.

I'm Lisa González, Certified EOS Implementer® and co-author of Process! How Discipline and Consistency Will Set You and Your Business Free, the official EOS book on the Process Component. I've run this exercise with leadership teams hundreds of times. It takes about an hour when you do it right.

What counts as a core process?

A core process is a major way work flows through your business, end to end. Not a task. Not a checklist. A flow. For most companies the list looks like this:

• HR process: how you find, hire, onboard, review, and exit people
• Marketing process: how you generate awareness and leads
• Sales process: how leads become customers
• Operations processes: how you deliver what you sell, usually two or three (for example: project intake, production, delivery)
• Accounting process: how money comes in, goes out, and gets reported
• Customer service or retention process: how you keep customers and grow them

If your list runs past ten, you are listing sub-processes. "Invoicing" is not a core process. It lives inside accounting.

The one-session exercise

1. Each leader lists the processes they believe run the company. Independently, before discussion. Ten minutes.
2. Combine the lists. Expect 15 to 25 items. That's normal.
3. Roll sub-processes up. Keep asking: is this a flow, or a step inside a flow? Merge until six to ten remain.
4. Name each one. The name matters more than people think. When sales calls it "the handoff" and operations calls it "intake," nobody owns it. Agree on one name and use it everywhere.
5. Assign an owner to each. One name per process. The owner leads documentation and answers for followership.

Where teams go wrong

They skip the naming debate. The argument about what to call your sales-to-operations handoff is not wasted time. It is the team discovering they each run a different company in their heads.

They let the org chart drive the list. Processes cross departments. Your customer doesn't experience your departments. They experience your flows.

They aim for complete instead of correct. Six processes everyone agrees on beats fourteen nobody remembers.

What happens after you identify them

Documentation comes next, using the 20/80 rule: capture the 20 percent of steps that produce 80 percent of the results, one to three pages per process. I walk through that in How to Use the EOS 3-Step Process Documenter. Then comes the real work: getting them followed by all. More on that in Why Employees Don't Follow SOPs.

Frequently asked questions

How many core processes should a business have?

Six to ten. Fewer than six usually means something important is buried. More than ten usually means sub-processes are on the list.

What is the difference between a core process and a sub-process?

A core process is an end-to-end flow, like sales or hiring. A sub-process is a piece of one, like writing a proposal or posting a job ad. Document core processes first.

Who should identify the core processes?

The full leadership team, together, in one session. If one person does it alone, the rest of the team never owns the result.

Does this only work for EOS companies?

No. Any company benefits from naming its core processes. If you run on EOS, this is Step 1 of the 3-Step Process Documenter in the EOS Toolbox.

Want help running this session? This is exactly what I do with leadership teams. Book a discovery call.