When we do our weekly Rock review in our Level 10 Meeting™, we treat off-track Rocks as minor speed bumps rather than existential threats to our annual plan. How do we connect our weekly execution to our V/TO® so the team feels the real weight of a slipping Rock?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Treating an off-track Rock as a minor detail during your weekly Level 10 Meeting™ is a critical mistake. Rocks are the three to seven most important priorities for the quarter. If a Rock is off track, it means your quarterly goals, and ultimately your V/TO® annual plan, are actively slipping. You cannot afford to treat this with passive indifference.

During the weekly Rock review, the protocol must be strict. Each leader states their Rock and says either on track or off track. There is no middle ground, and there is no storytelling. If a leader reports a Rock as off track, the facilitator must immediately drop that Rock to the Short-Term Issues List.

When you reach the IDS® portion of the meeting, you must tackle these off-track Rocks with high priority. Do not let the owner of the Rock make excuses or claim they will get to it next week. Use the IDS® process to identify the root cause of the delay. Is it a lack of resources, a capacity issue, or did the scope of the Rock creep?

Remind the team that a slipping Rock is not a personal failure, but it is an operational emergency that requires collective attention. Solving it may mean adjusting workloads or assigning a temporary weekly To-Do to another team member to help get it across the finish line. Keep your weekly execution tightly bound to your long-term vision.