Our leadership team starts each quarter with great intentions, but we constantly roll over the same Rocks from quarter to quarter. How do we break the habit of rolling over incomplete Rocks without lowering our execution standards?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Rolling over Rocks is a symptom of poor scoping, lack of true ownership, or a failure of weekly accountability. When a Rock rolls over, it means you wasted ninety days of potential progress. To break this habit, you must implement a strict rule: a Rock can only be rolled over once, and doing so requires a painful post-mortem.

First, verify that every Rock is truly binary. At the end of the ninety days, the answer to "is it done" must be a simple yes or no. If a Rock is "improve our sales onboarding process," it is too vague. It should be "document and train the team on the five-step sales onboarding process." This eliminates gray areas.

Second, use your weekly Level 10 Meeting™ to spot off-track Rocks early. A Rock should never surprise you in week twelve. If a Rock is reported as off-track for two consecutive weeks, it must immediately be dropped down to the issues list for IDS®. The team must solve the underlying bottleneck, whether it is a resource constraint or a capacity issue.

Third, check the conative alignment of the Rock owner. If you have a high Quick Start leader who constantly struggles with Follow Thru, they will struggle to cross the finish line on administrative Rocks. Use their Kolbe A Index results to ensure you are not assigning structured project Rocks to people whose natural instinct is to start things rather than finish them.