This article provides some best practices to be more successful at executing rocks based on the experience of several teams running on EOS®.
ROCKs: the most important things you must accomplish in ninety days.
Company rocks are priorities for the company that ensure you will hit your 1 year plan.
Departmental rocks are priorities for your department.
Individual rocks are priorities for you or another individual.
1. Define your Rocks as SMART Goals
Specific - specifically what will be achieved?
Measurable - how will it be measured?
Achievable - is it achievable?
Relevant – is it relevant to my role and goal?
Timely – can it be done within the timeline?
2. Rock Planning
Assign a To-Do for everyone during the Quarterly/Annual session to come to the next L10 with the rock plans documented and, as an option, added into whatever software you use.
Consider necessary date specific milestones, define parameters, consider budget, resources and people that will be involved in executing your rocks.
Wordsmith the rock title and ensure it paints the picture of what DONE looks like using words like “completed, optimized, phase 1, etc.”.
Be careful not to lump multiple rocks into one. Break them apart so you can clearly report on them individually. EX: Hire an Ops Director and Production Team Member – break them into 2 separate rocks so that they can be planned individually and reported on more accurately.
Using tools like the “Impact Filter” from Strategic coach can be extremely useful in planning rocks.
Review all rock plans individually with your direct reports, as needed, at the start of the quarter.
Some team members will be more efficient in creating their rock plans and others will need a bit more help – be considerate of how to support each of your team members to create a great plan with clear expectations on what successful rock completion looks like.
Front load the quarter with your rock tasks as much as you can – do not wait until halfway through the quarter to begin working on them. Plan for bumps in the road so that you can easily swerve around them and not give excuses at the Quarterly for why you were “ON TRACK” all quarter then suddenly moved to “NOT DONE”.
Can hiring be a rock? Based on our experience, hiring can be added as a rock with these guidelines in place:
o You should not sacrifice the quality or RP/RS of a person for the sake of completing a rock in order to say DONE.
o Consider that completion is potentially not included in your overall average rock completion percentage.
3. Rock Accountability and Reporting
During the weekly L10, you will report ON TRACK or OFF TRACK for each of your rocks with your team. The ON TRACK progress should be demonstrated with milestones or tasks being completed progressively week over week. If any milestones were not hit or if you are in danger of not completing by the Quarterly due date, that would be an OFF TRACK reporting.
Confirm rock status during weekly/monthly same page/1:1 meetings throughout the Quarter and guide them through any obstacles and barriers to completion.
Encourage the team to call BS during L10s if there are questions on the status of the rock or regarding steps necessary to get to DONE – drop to Issues List if necessary to discuss.
Consider adding rock specific measurables to the scorecard to track numbers weekly.
Do not wait until the last minute, day or week before rocks are due to finalize them! Set necessary meetings to brainstorm, review, rollout, final approval, etc., with any essential individuals ahead of time.
Tip: Use a project planning software like Monday.com, Traction Tools, 90.io, Asana etc. to enter in all your rock tasks and milestones to keep you on track.
4. Rock Execution Time!
Don’t wait! Start the week after your Quarterly or Annual. Plan your week with rocks first then fill the rest of the week with your accountability chart roles and fill in the holes with everything else.
Use your calendar to set appointments or set reminders to let you know when to meet with people, work on rocks, complete follow ups, stay on track with milestones etc.
Block out your calendar with “rock work”, “heads down”, “deep work” or “offline” days. Name this work and advertise to the company that this block time is to be respected without interruption unless truly an emergency. This time should be treated as if you are out of office. Set your out of office accordingly!
Use this planned time for you to work on the highest priority goals of the company that quarter. The day to day of the business will survive without you. Use this time to define, plan and do the next week or two weeks of work towards milestone completion. Weekly, you will see progress and you will feel proud and confident to state “ON TRACK!” during your L10 meetings.
5. Adding or Removing Rocks
During your Quarterly Session, the team agreed that the rocks set were the highest priority for the quarter, therefore as a general rule, try not to add rocks throughout the quarter – try your best to look ahead and set them for what has to be done this quarter.
Sometimes something pops up that needs to be added in – review it with the Leadership team, ensure everyone agrees to add it and assess the workload of adding it to confirm that other rocks will still get done.
If something is no longer relevant or no longer needs to be done this quarter – agree to remove it OR add to the long-term issues list to address it next quarter.
What if you want to add something that’s only 30 or 60 days to complete and you want reporting on it each week? Especially in times of higher stress and tight deadlines to act fast we need to have the flexibility to add important things with accountability and reporting supporting them. Be clear on the due date being tighter than 90 days and report accordingly. Do not make this a habit of setting various sporadic due dates for all your rocks – this should be the extreme exception and not the norm.
Do not add or remove rocks without reviewing with the Integrator and/or Leadership team first.
6. Rock Completion
You finished your rock in the 30-60 days – great! Consider – was it really a rock? Should you have made it a bit bigger of a goal? Or did you just kick butt and get it done early?!
Address any RP/RS issues with anyone that is not getting their rocks done consistently or not hitting the mark on completion or expectations.
Review rock completion during your Quarterly and in all Quarterly Conversations/5-5-5.
If a rock is 1-2 weeks away from completion, take the remaining pieces as to-dos and get it done!
If a rock needs to continue into the next quarter, just carry it over.
The goal of completion is to hit 80% or better each quarter when reporting at the Quarterly.