Rock Rules
One of the most important roles of any leadership team is to align the entire organization around a small number of priorities that move you forward towards reaching that vision you have for the organization.
And I think one of the most important timeframes to look at is 90 days, one quarter, because in a quarter, the world's not going to change very much.
And there's also a sense of urgency or real sense of urgency to get something done.
And I call those quarterly priorities Rocks.
So what I want to share with you is a set of do's and don'ts for creating rocks within your organization in the most effective way.
The first Rock rule is that any rock you create needs to result in significant improvement to the business. It's not a standard part of your operating procedure. It's not within the whirlwind of the day to day, working in the business, a rock is about what you're doing to work on the business to improve the business.
Rock rule number two, any rock you create should align with the future vision of your organization. How does the rock move you closer to your three year vision? How does it move you closer to your one year priorities and your financial targets?
Rock rule number three. Again a rock is a small number of priorities for the quarter. If you say we've got these 12 rocks for the quarter, well, if everything's a priority, nothing's a priority. So a true rock is going to be within the top five most important things that you need to do to move things forward, right now, this quarter. I prefer my clients to have one, two, maybe three rocks, certainly no more than 5.
The fourth Rock rule. For each rock, there needs to be clear accountability. And when I say accountability, I don't mean responsibility. Responsibility is who's rolling up their sleeves to help complete that rock, that might be one person it might be 500 people. When I say accountability, I mean who is the one and only one person who owns creating the plan, the strategy, who really owns who's accountable for making sure that rock is completed, and we're getting value from that rock.
Rock rule number five, a rock should be within your control. A rock that relies on the government doing X or the economy doing Y or some change in regulations, that's not a great rock. A rock should be something that is for the most part within your control. Now, you may say nothing is totally within our control. And I agree with that, but a majority, that the probability of getting this done should be for the most part within your control.
Rock rule number six. A rock shouldn't be something that get done in a week or two, remember the rock of the 90 day priority. So a rock should take the better part of a quarter to get done. Now on every project doesn't magically end at the end of the quarter. So rock could be something that takes the better part of a quarter to complete could also be something that is one part of some initiatives, some project that may take 6-9-12 months to complete.
Rock rule number seven, there needs to be a clear finish line for the rock. Whenever one of my clients defines a rock for the quarter, and they kind of get sick of me saying what is the finish line look like? So you need a clear measurable finish line where you can color code it you know, green for success, yellow for we're not succeeding yet. We're behind but but we may be able to get back on track, but we're in danger and red for failure. So what is that clear, measurable finish line for the rock. That means having a rock like we're going to improve communication, it's not a great rock because there's no clear finish line.
Rock roll number eight. And this again is, it gets back to the finish line. But I'm going to be more specific. It's easy for a finish line to be well the finish line is I'm going to get these five things done. Well, the problem with that is in a lot of cases, there is a chance you may get these five things done, but there's no real value to the organization. You may get five things done to create a great leadership development program. But if nobody is participating in that program, or people are participating in that program, but it's not increasing their productivity or employee retention or talent density, if it's not having any measurable value then it wasn't worth doing. So the finish line for a rock should be outcome driven, not task driven.
And then lastly, there should be a clear differentiator between what I call company rocks, and department rocks. What are the 1, 2, 3 most important things for the company? Those are company rocks, but I stress on the leadership teams I work with that just because you don't own a company, a Rock doesn't mean you don't have something you need to move forward on to improve the business that quarter.
In that case, each.
Each department head, each owner of functional accountability within an organization should have at least one no more than two rocks, they're moving forward.
Those are called department rocks.
They're not as important as company rocks. But they're still important to move forward. And the reason we do that is if you take all of those and call them rocks, you wind up with 15 or 20 rocks.
And again, if everything's a priority, nothing is a priority.
But if you separate company rocks from department rocks, you can truly say number one, this is most important to the company. And number two, you've got to set a priority.
So if somebody is falling behind in their company rocks, you might have to let your department rock go to jump in and help them with their company rocks.
A big mistake I see is leadership teams just create a whole bunch of rocks for every individual. And again, it looks like everything is important.
There's no real true prioritization.
So nine rock rolls, I know 10 is more of an even number. I'll probably come up with a 10th at some point, but nine rock rules that I hope help you create your rocks in your next quarterly planning session with your team