Our leadership team is setting five to seven Rocks every quarter but we only complete about fifty percent of them because everyday operational fires get in the way. How do we reset our expectations and execution discipline?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Completing fifty percent of your Rocks is a clear sign of lack of focus and poor prioritization. When everything is important, nothing is important. Setting five to seven Rocks per leader, in addition to running their departments, is a recipe for burnout and operational failure.

To reset your execution discipline, you must adopt the rule of less is more. At your next quarterly offsite, limit your leadership team to setting no more than three Rocks per person, and try to keep the company-wide Rocks to three as well.

- Ensure each Rock is written using the SMART framework, with a clear, measurable outcome and a single owner on the Accountability Chart.
- Make sure the scope of each Rock is realistic given the leader's daily operational responsibilities.

During the quarter, protect these Rocks ruthlessly. In your weekly Level 10 Meetings™, review the status of each Rock. If a Rock is off track, do not ignore it or accept excuses about operational fires. Immediately place it on the IDS® list.

Use the IDS® process to identify why the Rock is slipping. Is the leader lacking capacity, are they hitting a conative bottleneck, or are they failing to delegate? By addressing these issues weekly, you build the execution muscle needed to consistently achieve a ninety percent completion rate every quarter.