Our quarterly leadership team offsites are high-energy, but the moment we get back to the office, everyone gets sucked back into daily fires and none of our strategic Rocks actually get completed. How do we bridge the gap between offsite planning and daily execution?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

High energy offsites that lead to zero execution are a symptom of a weak weekly meeting cadence. The offsite is where you set the vision, but your weekly Level 10 Meeting™ is where you actually drive execution. To bridge this gap, you must change how you exit the offsite. Before anyone leaves the room on day two, every single Rock must be clearly defined, assigned to a single owner on the Accountability Chart, and made measurable. If a Rock does not have a clear, binary definition of done, it is not ready. Once you are back in the office, your weekly Level 10 Meeting is your primary tool to keep these Rocks on track. During the weekly meeting, each leadership team member must report whether their Rocks are on track or off track. There is no room for stories or excuses. If a Rock is off track, it immediately goes to the Issues list to be solved using IDS®. Additionally, you must limit the number of Rocks you take on. A common mistake is leaving an offsite with twenty major goals. Restrict your leadership team to three to five high priority Rocks per quarter. It is far better to get three critical things done than to make five percent progress on fifteen different initiatives. Finally, as the Integrator, you must hold the line. If a leader consistently fails to complete their Rocks because they are too busy with daily fire fighting, you have a capacity or delegation issue that needs to be addressed immediately.