What Are Quarterly Rocks? (And How to Pick the Right Ones)

If you have looked into quarterly planning, you have run into the word rock. It sounds like jargon. The idea underneath it is simple and useful.

The definition

A rock is a meaningful outcome you commit to finishing this quarter.

It is bigger than a task. Send the proposal is a task. A signed contract with the first client for the new service is a rock.

It is smaller than a yearly goal. Double revenue is a year, or three. A repeatable sales process that closes one deal a week, documented and handed to the sales hire is a rock.

The name comes from the old picture of a jar. If you fill it with sand and pebbles first, the big rocks never fit. If you put the big rocks in first, the small stuff fills in around them. Your quarter works the same way.

How to pick your rocks

Start from your Vivid Vision. Look at the one slice of it you decided this quarter is about. Ask: what two or three outcomes, if finished, would actually move that slice forward?

Then sanity check against reality. Do you have the time and the people to finish these while the business keeps running? If not, cut the list until you do.

Three to five company rocks. No more than three for any single person, including you.

How to size a rock

A good rock passes two tests.

• It has a clear done. You can describe the finished state in one sentence, and everyone would agree whether it happened.
• You would bet money on it. Given everything else this quarter, you are confident you finish it. If you are not, it is too big. Cut the scope.

A rock you are only 50 percent sure about is really two quarters of work pretending to be one.

The rock people forget

At least one rock every quarter should be about your life, not the business. Home for dinner every night I am in town this quarter is a rock. Two weeks fully off in August, booked and protected is a rock.

Most planning fixes your business or your personal life, but rarely both. Putting a life rock on the same list as the business rocks is how you keep the quarter from quietly trading your life away.

Tracking rocks

Once a week, each rock owner reports one word: on track, at risk, or off track, plus what they need. That is the whole check-in. You track tasks daily and rocks weekly.

If a rock goes to at risk, deal with it that week. Cut scope, add help, or move it to next quarter. What you do not do is let it sit at at risk for a month and then mark it missed.

Where rocks fit in the bigger picture

Rocks are the middle layer. The Vivid Vision is the three-year picture. The 90-day plan breaks it into this quarter. Rocks are the three to five things that plan actually commits to. Your weekly tasks are how the rocks get built.

Get the rocks right and the rest of the quarter mostly runs itself.

Examples of good and bad rocks

Here are pairs, so the difference is concrete.

Bad: improve our hiring. Good: a written hiring process for the operations role, used to make one hire this quarter.

Bad: get healthier. Good: lift three mornings a week, every week, for the full quarter, tracked on the scoreboard.

Bad: grow revenue. Good: two new clients on the new retainer package, signed and onboarded.

Bad: fix operations. Good: billing runs on a checklist anyone on the team can follow, with zero founder involvement by the end of the quarter.

The bad ones are directions. The good ones have a finish line you could photograph.

Assigning an owner

Every rock gets exactly one owner. Not a team, not two co-owners. One person whose job it is to make sure that outcome happens, and who reports its status every week.

The owner does not have to do all the work. They have to own the result. If a rock has no clear owner, it belongs to everyone, which means it belongs to no one, and it will be the one that slips.

What to do when a rock is at risk

In the weekly check-in, an owner says on track, at risk, or off track. When something goes to at risk, that is a signal to act that week, not a status to sit with.

You have three moves. Cut the scope so the smaller version finishes. Add help or clear something off the owner’s plate. Or move the rock to next quarter, on purpose, and say so out loud. What you do not do is nod at at risk for six weeks and then mark it missed at the quarter’s end.

How rocks connect to the vision

Every rock should trace back to a slice of your Vivid Vision. If you cannot say which part of the three-year picture a rock moves forward, question whether it belongs on the list. A quarter of rocks that are all just this-quarter firefighting means the plan has drifted off the vision, and it is time to re-read it. See turning your vision into a plan.

Hold the vision. Not the circumstances.