Background
In his book, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey outlines the concept of “rocks”. Essentially, he points out that the most important things need to get done first, or they won’t get done at all. At Ventrek, we use that concept to refer to quarterly prior
ities. If you recall (https://ventrek.com/latest-news/what-is-entrepreneurial-strategy/), strategy is the allocation of resources toward activities that lead to a desired outcome. Resources are time, money and people. Desired outcome is your 5-Year Mission (https://ventrek.com/latest-news/an-entrepreneurs-guide-to-creating-a-5-year-mission-statement/). Activities are strategic objectives (https://ventrek.com/latest-news/creating-impactful-strategic-objectives/) and quarterly priorities which we call rocks.
Why Rocks Are Critical
Companies spend a great deal of time building strategic plans and are excited after an annual planning session. Far too often, however, that plan dies on the vine. Most companies have no way of ensuring action and movement toward the goals for the year. They might check on them once per quarter, at best. At Ventrek, it’s all about gaining solid strategic traction and executing on the plan. To achieve this, setting rocks that align with your strategic objectives is absolutely critical in gaining traction and achieving your goals. Think of it this way. Say you had a personal goal of getting into good shape and losing a few pounds this year. That’s your goal and, in our world, that would be a strategic objective. Well, if you only went to the gym once per quarter chances are you will not get into shape nor lose any weight. Same thing applies to strategic objectives: you must build quarterly priorities AND measure those every single week.
How to Create Powerful Quarterly Rocks
Creating rocks without setting solid strategic objectives is virtually impossible. If you don’t have a solid plan for the year with specific strategic objectives, you will simply be creating rocks willy nilly with no direction or alignment. Unfortunately, some entrepreneurial systems, like EOS (entrepreneurial operating system), do this exact thing – they create rocks in a void with no tie-in to yearly objectives and goals. Instead, you must create rocks that support and are aligned with your yearly strategic objectives. This not only gives you incredible focus – choosing what NOT to do – but also gives you clarity on direction and total alignment across the company. These rocks are essentially milestones toward your yearly strategic objectives.
To create rocks, we like to brainstorm possible ways we can advance each strategic objective. From there, isolate those most important rocks keeping in mind that rocks are strategic and Business As Usual activities generally occupy the most time for people (see this post for understanding BAU vs Strategy: https://ventrek.com/latest-news/entrepreneurial-strategy-business-as-usual-activities-vs-strategic-activities/). We’ve worked with dozens of clients and, for the most part, 1-3 rocks per leadership team member is about right – sometimes none, sometimes more. It’s all about balancing BAU to strategy.
Before finalizing your rocks, we recommend asking the following questions…
- Pass One: What is the rock and whose is it?
- Pass Two: Is this a priority for THIS quarter or can it wait?
- Pass Three: For the person who is assigned the rock: “how many hours will this take you and can you get it done?
Remember, it’s ok to push rocks into future quarters. Your goal is to stay aligned with your strategic objectives and move them forward without overwhelming the team with too many rocks.
Once you’ve settled on the rocks for the quarter, it’s time to input them into a system and fine-tune them. Using a powerful strategic planning software, such as VentrekAI (https://ventrek.com/software/), really helps to ensure everyone is aligned and you can easily view and update rock progress. There are a few rock “rules” we strongly encourage:
- Each rock is assigned to ONE PERSON only – one person ultimately responsible (OPUR). This is so important to ensure accountability. And, remember, being responsible for a rock does NOT mean doing it all! No, it means you will stick handle the rock and engage resources as required to get it done.
- Each rock is about seven words or less with a strong verb. It must be stated in clear language and must be a goal for the quarter. Saying, “we will increase sales” is NOT a SMART goal – you want rocks to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based. Instead, the rock would be something like…”By April 30, we will achieve sales of $1m for product x.”. Much better.
- Progress on rocks must be measure every single week asking “on or off track”. For off track rocks, ideally the team jumps in to help the person get over any stumbling blocks. Measuring progress weekly is critical to ensure traction.
The final step we recommend in building powerful rocks is to attach at least three success criteria to each rock. Rocks are 90-day priorities whereas success criteria are small pebbles that can be measured weekly. They really help track progress toward rocks and ensure the rock is not left until the last minute.
Conclusion
Building powerful rocks that are aligned with strategic objectives are critical in entrepreneurial strategy. This is where the magic happens. Once you get rocks built, you will be amazed at what you can achieve.