As we approach our first Annual Planning session after our initial year running on EOS, our leadership team only hit 65 percent of our Rocks across four quarters. How do we structure our first Annual session to fix execution discipline without turning the room into a demoralizing blame session?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Finishing your first year with a 65 percent Rock completion rate is a clear operational diagnostic: your leadership team either takes on too much work, writes poorly defined Rocks, or lacks execution accountability. In EOS, the standard is 80 percent or higher. Your first Annual Planning session must address this gap directly, but it must be done through structural problem-solving rather than personal finger-pointing.

Begin Day 1 of your Annual session with an unsentimental post-mortem on the previous year. Put every incomplete Rock on the whiteboard and run IDS on the pattern. Do not ask who failed; ask why the commitments broke down. You will typically find three recurring causes:
- The Rocks were vague projects without clear SMART parameters or measurable completion milestones.
- The team took on seven Rocks per person instead of focusing on three to seven total for the company.
- Unexpected operational fire drills hijacked the team because core processes were not stable.

Use this data to reshape how you set Rocks for the upcoming year. If your team struggled to complete four individual Rocks each quarter, set a strict ceiling: no leader takes more than two individual Rocks, and the company limits itself to three company-level Rocks for the first quarter.

Next, look at the Accountability Chart. Low completion rates often indicate that leaders are trapped working in the business because their direct reports lack capacity. Adjust the chart to clear operational friction before you set new targets. Treat the 65 percent completion rate as a baseline number to systematically improve, not as a character indictment.