Organizations are overwhelmingly familiar with setting goals. Leaders set yearly ones, they’re created for specific projects, and they can be short or long term. They’re also applied to new employees, stand-out ones, and to those that need a little boost. They can even be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely). While setting goals is proven to be a major factor in accomplishing them, many organizations fall short of achieving them because they are trying to do too many things at once.
No matter the organization, there are always things that need to be done. It’s all part of the day-to-day processes that make an organization thrive. The problem with this is if all the responsibility of achieving said goals falls on a small team (or a single person), things can begin to fall through the cracks. Year over year, leaders are challenged with reaching year-end benchmarks and milestones but with daily responsibilities, contingencies, and ahem, pandemics and economic crises to consider, it’s no wonder many find it hard to stay on track.
Rocks and pebbles and sand, oh my!
Seeing those words may put you in the mindset of taking a vacation—because after 2020 we’re all overdue—but this really is all business and how you can be on your way to running your organization 90 days at a time. Rocks is a term created for the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System®) business model that changes your individual goals into rocks. Sounds silly but you’d be amazed at how well this can work for you. In an experiment performed by Dr. Stephen R. Covey from his book First Things First, he illustrated how rocks, pebbles, and sand fit into a jar when organized correctly. With rocks representing your main goals, the pebbles being your daily, regular responsibilities, and the sand as all of the interruptions and background noise that comes in between, when you don’t prioritize your main goals, you’re not going to achieve all that you need to in a given day…or year. When focus on what’s most important and put your rocks first, everything else falls into place.
Taking the 90-day approach saves valuable time, effort, and aggravation because you constantly look at what’s most critical. This allows you to prioritize key objectives by keeping them at the forefront of the minds of you and your employees. If something doesn’t get completed, just move it into the next 90-day period. It’s that simple.
As one of the region’s leader in workforce development, we believe in this strategy because this is how we operate internally—and it works! Laurel Ridge Workforce Solutions adopted the EOS® business model several years ago and take the 90-day approach in crushing our rocks and achieving our goals. Want to learn more about how this can work for your organization? Let’s talk.