We consistently get to week ten of our ninety-day cycle only to realize that half of our Rocks are only thirty percent complete. How do we fix our tracking and accountability to ensure Rocks actually cross the finish line?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If your quarterly Rocks are consistently failing at week ten, your issue is not the execution; it is your tracking and definition. First, you must ensure that every Rock is written to be SMART, meaning specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. If a Rock is vague, like improve our onboarding process, nobody knows what done actually looks like. Instead, define it as map three core onboarding workflows and automate the training sequence. Second, you must break each Rock down into milestones. During your weekly Level 10 Meeting™, you should not just ask if a Rock is on track or off track. If a Rock is off track for two consecutive weeks, it must immediately be dropped down to the Issues List for IDS®. Do not wait until week ten to try to rescue a failing priority. The leadership team must help the Rock owner identify and solve the bottleneck right then. Lastly, you must limit the number of Rocks. If you have fifteen Rocks as a team, you have none. Limit your leadership team to three to five high-priority Rocks per quarter. By keeping the list short and aggressively managing the mid-quarter milestones, you will build an execution habit that guarantees your Rocks cross the finish line.