Welcome back to the Business Builder newsletter. We're continuing the EOS series, and in today's issue, I'll share my experience applying the "Rocks" analogy in my business.

Estimated read time: 3 minutes.

The Rockefeller “Rocks”

I learned the term from Verne Harnish, the author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. Verne got it from an analogy in Stephen Covey’s book, “First Things First.”

It’s a simple analogy. Here’s how it works:

Picture a glass cylinder set on a table. Next to the cylinder are rocks, gravel, sand, and a glass of water.

Imagine the cylinder as all of the time you have in a day.

• The rocks are your main priorities.

• The gravel represents your day-to-day responsibilities.

• The sand represents the daily interruptions.

• The glass of water is everything else you get hit with during your workday.

What happens if you, as most people do, pour the water in first, then the sand, followed by the gravel, and the rocks last? Those big priorities won’t fit inside the glass cylinder. That’s your typical day.

But what if you do the reverse?

This way, you’ll work on the big stuff first: Put the rocks in. Then comes the day-to-day responsibilities: Add the gravel.

Now, dump in the sand, all those interruptions.

Finally, pour the water in. Everything fits in the glass cylinder perfectly; everything fits in your day perfectly.

Implementing the Rocks in My Business:

First, we set the rocks in the annual meeting, and then in the quarterly meeting the rocks are linked to our strategic goals and to our strategies.

It's typically recommended to have between three and seven rocks at most, the fewer, the better.

However, our strategy consists of three strategic goals, and each strategic goal has three strategies to accomplish that goal.

We have a directly responsible owner for each of these nine goals across nine people in our team.

So each team member owns one of these strategic goals in the company

You can use tools like EOS-1 or Clickup goals that allow you to track the weekly progress of your rocks.

Initially, when you start creating your rocks, they'll probably suck for the first two quarters or so, but then they should start improving.

Simplified OKRs

The SMART goals framework—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound—can be applied to Rocks as well, and the more you know about goal frameworks, the better.

Rocks are essentially just simplified OKRs, which is why I always recommend that organizations looking to adopt OKRs start with rocks first.

As Matt Mochary points out in his Mochary Method book, most OKR implementations fail, and the shortcut for him is to bring an expert CTO or COO from Silicon Valley or the Bay Area to implement them successfully in your company.

I prefer to start with rocks, seeing them as the simplest form of strategy alignment available, thus making it the optimal starting point.

I’ll keep sharing the EOS method as we continue the series. Next week’s focus will be on the meeting pulse.

Stay tuned.

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If you want to learn more about building a successful business, be sure to check out my free ebook on the topic, available now on my website: luqmanshantal.com