Midway through the quarter, leadership team members realize their Rocks depend heavily on other departments that never agreed to the workload. How do we structure cross-functional dependencies so Rocks actually finish?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a Rock stalls because Marketing cannot produce assets for Sales or IT cannot configure software for Operations, the failure occurred on session day, not in week seven. A Rock must have exactly one owner. That single owner is completely accountable for the outcome, regardless of who does the legwork.

To prevent cross-functional stalemates, enforce three rules during Rock setting:

- First, the owner must identify every seat they need assistance from before the Rock is finalized. If the head of Sales needs twenty hours of development time, the head of Technology must explicitly agree to allocate those hours before leaving the room.
- Second, if supporting another leader's Rock requires substantial time, that commitment must become a milestone or individual priority for the supporting seat, not a favor granted when time permits.
- Third, keep individual Rock ownership absolute. An owner cannot hide behind another department during weekly check-ins. If a dependency goes silent, the owner must drop that bottleneck onto the Level 10 Meeting Issues List immediately rather than waiting for the quarterly review.

A Rock is not an aspirational goal. It is a locked 90-day operational milestone. If a dependency cannot be guaranteed on session day, resize the Rock or kill it until resources exist.