We keep missing our quarterly targets, and half of our Rocks are carried over from quarter to quarter. What is the breakdown in our execution, and how do we actually get to ninety percent completion?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Missing quarterly Rocks is a symptom of two primary issues: poor scope and lack of unscheduled time. Many leadership teams treat Rock setting like a wish list, committing to massive, multi-phased projects that are impossible to complete in ninety days. To get to ninety percent completion, you must learn to scope Rocks properly and protect your team's capacity. First, ensure every Rock is truly SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. If a Rock is to improve customer service, it will fail. If the Rock is to design, test, and launch a new customer onboarding sequence by day eighty-five, it has a chance. Second, address the capacity issue. In her work on productivity, Juliet Funt emphasizes the critical need for white space, which is open, unscheduled time to think and plan. If your leadership team is completely booked with back-to-back meetings and daily firefighting, they will never finish their Rocks. You must deliberately build strategic pauses into their schedules. Limit the number of Rocks to no more than three per person, and ideally just one or two for overloaded individuals. During your weekly Level 10 Meeting™, do not just ask for a status update. If a Rock is off track, drop it down to the Issues List and use IDS® to identify the bottleneck and solve it immediately. By combining realistic scoping, protected white space, and aggressive weekly tracking, your team will start crossing the finish line every single quarter.