Gaining Traction by Identifying Your Quarterly Rocks

Business coaches teach their clients the importance of setting the right quarterly goals. Quarterly goals – or Rocks as we call them at EOS® – serve as the building blocks for long-term business success. Our coaches show clients how to gain Traction® on their big goals by identifying quarterly Rocks. So what does all of this mean for you as a business owner?

What Are Quarterly Rocks?

Quarterly Rocks are the three to seven most important things your company, department, or team must complete within the next 90 days. Rocks represent goals that will take longer than seven days to complete. They allow you to break down a large project into smaller, digestible tasks with clear deliverables and timelines for your long-term plan.

Regular review and refinement of your goals help you break down seemingly monumental feats into smaller, more manageable projects. Give heavy consideration to the goals of your 1-Year Plan and, ultimately, your 3-Year Picture™.

By focusing on keeping the 1-Year Plan on track, you automatically get on the right path for even longer-range goals.

Company Rocks prioritize actions for the entire company. Departmental Rocks represent the most important things that must happen to achieve goals at the department level. Finally, each team member will have their own individual Rocks to prioritize specifically for their role.

Why Do We Need Rocks?

Teams need to regularly review and prioritize your long-term goals if you want to accomplish them. Often we become so focused on day-to-day tasks in the business that we lose sight of future planning.

And meetings once a year just won’t cut it. Think about how much happens in your business throughout any given week, never mind throughout a whole year!

Quarterly meetings narrow the big picture goals to just the most critical priorities for the next 90 days. By establishing Rocks, you keep your leadership team laser-focused and working towards completing your objectives. And this helps everyone to focus on the future.

Then, by reevaluating goals each quarter, your team can determine the priorities for the next 90 days. And ultimately, this makes gaining Traction in your business easier … one step at a time.

By the way, gaining Traction doesn’t just mean increased sales or growing a more extensive customer base. Rocks will unite the entire company behind each objective set forward for the quarter.

Making SMART Rocks

Creating a 90-Day World® for your company provides clarity and focus so that everyone works towards the same goals.

But Rocks can only be useful if they follow the typical benchmark for goals by making them SMART:

• Specific: no wishy-washiness here, get a very clear scope
• Measurable: How will you objectively know you’ve achieved your goal?
• Achievable: big goals belong on 10-Year Targets or 3-Year Pictures
• Relevant: Will this move the needle for your company?
• Time-based: ideally, quarterly Rocks should be complete before the next Quarterly meeting

This can take some work to get this process right. But it will get easier each quarter to get your leadership team on the same page and create better Rocks. And when everyone focuses on the right priorities for your business, that effort will be well worth it. That’s where you get Traction.

Need some help getting started? Get Matched with an EOS Implementer for a free 90 Minute Meeting!