Every quarter we set what we think are realistic Rocks, but our day-to-day firefighting always takes precedence, and we end up rushing to complete fifty percent of them in week twelve. How do we resource our Rocks to protect them from the whirlwind of daily operations?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Rushing to complete Rocks at the end of the quarter is a classic sign of over-commitment and poor resourcing. Leadership teams often treat Rocks as an extra set of tasks piled on top of a full forty-hour work week. To break this cycle, you must treat Rocks as your primary strategic work and actively budget your team members' capacity to handle them.

When setting Rocks during your quarterly planning session, you must ask a critical question for each proposed Rock: who is going to do the actual work, and what are they going to stop doing to make time for it? If a leader already has a full scorecard and a heavy operational workload, you cannot expect them to complete a major initiative without something else giving way. You must either delegate some of their daily tasks down the Accountability Chart or reduce the scope of the Rock.

Furthermore, you need to break each quarterly Rock down into clear milestones during week one. Every week in your Level 10 Meeting™, you must report whether your Rocks are on track or off track. If a Rock is off track for two consecutive weeks, it must immediately be placed on the Issues list for IDS®. Do not wait until week ten to realize a Rock is in trouble. By treating Rocks as resourced projects rather than side-hustles, you build the discipline required to cross the finish line on time.