When cascading Level 10 Meetings to departmental teams where frontline staff do not own company Rocks, managers struggle with what to do during the Rock review portion of the agenda. How do we run a meaningful departmental Rock review without forcing individual contributors to invent fake priorities?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When rolling out Level 10 Meetings down the Accountability Chart, forcing frontline employees to invent individual Rocks just to fill an agenda slot creates administrative overhead and operational cynicism. A frontline technician, account manager, or production worker does not necessarily need a ninety-day company Rock. Their primary focus must remain executing their core seat responsibilities flawlessly day in and day out.

To make the departmental Rock review meaningful, adapt it to focus on departmental milestones and company alignment rather than personal projects:
- Departmental Rocks: Identify the two or three major quarterly priorities that the department head owns on the leadership team. Review those specific Rocks with the departmental team. Each week, discuss whether the department's collective output is keeping those rocks on track or off track.
- Milestone support: If a departmental Rock requires specific technical work, review the weekly micro-deliverables associated with that Rock. For example, if the department Rock is implementing a new warehouse inventory system, the weekly review confirms whether the testing phase or data entry milestone is on track.
- Company Rock visibility: Spend sixty seconds reminding the team of the leadership team's company-wide Rocks. This context helps frontline staff connect their daily work to enterprise milestones, reinforcing the V/TO throughout the ranks.

Keep the review strictly binary. The department head asks: Is this milestone on track or off track? If it is off track, it drops down to the departmental Issues List. Do not manufacture busywork. Use the Rock review to keep frontline execution locked onto the company's highest quarterly priorities.