We are midway through our quarter and external market shifts make two of our key Rocks look outdated. Do we pivot these Rocks mid-stride, or do we force the team to finish what we committed to in our quarterly planning session?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When external factors shift mid-quarter, your instinct as an owner is to pivot immediately. In EOS®, we treat quarterly Rocks as a ninety-day lock-in. Changing Rocks mid-quarter is almost always a mistake because it erodes execution discipline and teaches your team that commitments are optional.

A Rock is a firm commitment. Unless a dramatic pivot is existential to the survival of the business, you must push through to the end of the ninety days. If a Rock genuinely becomes obsolete due to a massive market shift, you do not rewrite it on the fly. Instead, you formally kill the Rock during your weekly Level 10 Meeting™ and move it to the Issues List. Do not replace it with a new one mid-quarter.

Let the unfinished or killed Rock show up as incomplete at the end of the quarter. This preserves the integrity of your numbers and highlights the cost of the pivot. In your next quarterly session, use this data to debate what happened. This discipline stops the leadership team from using market changes as an excuse for poor execution and ensures your quarterly Rocks actually mean something.