How do you handle a quarterly session where our leadership team hits less than eighty percent of our Rocks without letting us slide into excuse-making?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

We treat a sub-eighty percent quarter as an operational diagnostic, not an emotional trial. When you hit sixty or seventy percent of your Rocks, we do not nod sympathetically and carry the incomplete goals forward. We grade every Rock as a strict binary: it is either done or not done. Partial credit does not exist in EOS®.

Once the score is recorded, we push every failed Rock straight to the Issues List for IDS. During the IDS block, we hunt down the root cause. Did we fail because of poor initial scoping, unrealistic capacity planning, lack of delegation, or undisciplined firefighting? Did an executive lack the GWC (Get it, Want it, Capacity to do it) required for their seat?

If a Rock was derailed by a deliberate, necessary strategic pivot, we document that reality. If it was derailed by poor time management, lack of focus, or hesitation, we name it plainly without softening the blow.

We then decide whether that Rock is still vital for the next quarter or if it needs to be dropped entirely. Real accountability means facing the operational cost of failure and correcting course immediately, rather than lowering the standard to preserve executive comfort.