We have successfully cascaded EOS to our departmental teams, but their departmental Rocks do not seem to align with our overall company Rocks. How do we sync these priorities?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When departmental Rocks drift away from company priorities, it is usually because your quarterly cascading process is broken. This happens when leadership sets company Rocks in a vacuum and then simply tells managers to go make their own. To prevent this, you must run a structured cascading process. Once the leadership team sets the three to five company Rocks for the quarter, share them immediately with your departmental managers. Hold an alignment session where the managers present their proposed departmental Rocks to the leadership team or their direct supervisor. During this meeting, explicitly ask how each proposed departmental Rock directly supports or enables one of the company Rocks. If a manager proposes a Rock that has no clear connection to the high-level goals, it must be tabled or moved to the long-term Issues List. You must also ensure that managers understand that their primary job is to protect and drive the company's overall success, not just optimize their individual departments. This process creates a clean line of sight from the front-line employee up to the company's overall vision, ensuring that everyone is pulling in the exact same direction every single day.