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Quarterly Rocks That Actually Stick: The Secret to 90-Day Execution
In every company I’ve worked with—whether a $5M manufacturer or a $50M consumer products brand—the same pattern shows up:
January is full of ambition.
By March, everyone’s buried in day-to-day issues.
By June, the annual plan is a distant memory.
It’s not that the goals were bad.
It’s that the time horizon was too long and the focus was too vague.
That’s why I’m a big believer in Quarterly Rocks—a simple concept with real teeth when you apply it correctly.
What Are Quarterly Rocks?
Quarterly Rocks are the 3–5 most important priorities your business must accomplish in the next 90 days.
Not “nice-to-haves.”
Not “we should work on this someday.”
These are must-win, no-excuses priorities.
If these don’t get done, your strategic plan does not move.
Why 90 Days?
Because 12 months is too long.
People lose steam. Priorities drift. Urgency collapses.
But 90 days is the perfect execution window:
Long enough to accomplish something meaningful
Short enough to maintain urgency
Clear enough to track progress weekly
It forces the question:
“Out of everything we could do, what absolutely must get done in the next quarter?”
How to Choose Rocks That Actually Stick
Here’s the system I use with clients:
1. Start With the Strategic Plan
Every Rock should move one of your strategic objectives forward.
2. Choose Only 3–5 Company Rocks
If everything is a priority, nothing is.
3. Make Rocks Measurable and Binary
You either hit the Rock or you didn’t.
There is no “kind of finished.”
4. Assign One Owner Per Rock
Shared accountability = no accountability.
5. Break Each Rock Into Milestones
3–5 key steps that can be reviewed weekly.
This prevents “surprises in week 12.”
A Real-World Example — From Scattered Effort to Disciplined 90-Day Execution
(Consumer Products Company)
At the consumer products manufacturer I’ve referenced throughout this series, the company was drowning in priorities. Everyone was working hard, but very little was finishing.
We implemented Quarterly Rocks.
For Q1, we selected:
Reduce changeover time by 20%
Launch daily Tier 1 huddles across production and customer service
Stabilize fulfillment accuracy at 98%+
Each Rock had 3–5 milestones and a single accountable owner.
The team reviewed each Rock weekly—Green, Yellow, or Red—with no storytelling and no excuses.
By the end of the quarter:
Changeovers dropped by 22%
Daily huddles were running in every major function
Fulfillment accuracy hit 99.1% and stayed there
Nothing magical happened.
The company simply stopped working on everything…
and started finishing the work that mattered.
That’s the power of Rocks done right.
The Big Shift
When Rocks are part of your operating system:
Priorities become clear
Progress becomes measurable
Strategy becomes execution
90-day sprints drive annual results
Rocks convert your strategic plan from a document into action.
If your team sets goals but rarely finishes them, it’s not a motivation problem—it’s a structure problem.
👉 Download my free eBook The Five Steps to Freedom at optaprofit.com/ebook
or take the Silver Bullet Scorecard to see how strong your execution system really is:
Quarterly Rocks That Actually Stick: The Secret to 90-Day Execution
In every company I’ve worked with—whether a $5M manufacturer or a $50M consumer products brand—the same pattern shows up:
January is full of ambition.
By March, everyone’s buried in day-to-day issues.
By June, the annual plan is a distant memory.
It’s not that the goals were bad.
It’s that the time horizon was too long and the focus was too vague.
That’s why I’m a big believer in Quarterly Rocks—a simple concept with real teeth when you apply it correctly.
What Are Quarterly Rocks?
Quarterly Rocks are the 3–5 most important priorities your business must accomplish in the next 90 days.
Not “nice-to-haves.”
Not “we should work on this someday.”
These are must-win, no-excuses priorities.
If these don’t get done, your strategic plan does not move.
Why 90 Days?
Because 12 months is too long.
People lose steam. Priorities drift. Urgency collapses.
But 90 days is the perfect execution window:
Long enough to accomplish something meaningful
Short enough to maintain urgency
Clear enough to track progress weekly
It forces the question:
“Out of everything we could do, what absolutely must get done in the next quarter?”
How to Choose Rocks That Actually Stick
Here’s the system I use with clients:
1. Start With the Strategic Plan
Every Rock should move one of your strategic objectives forward.
2. Choose Only 3–5 Company Rocks
If everything is a priority, nothing is.
3. Make Rocks Measurable and Binary
You either hit the Rock or you didn’t.
There is no “kind of finished.”
4. Assign One Owner Per Rock
Shared accountability = no accountability.
5. Break Each Rock Into Milestones
3–5 key steps that can be reviewed weekly.
This prevents “surprises in week 12.”
A Real-World Example — From Scattered Effort to Disciplined 90-Day Execution
(Consumer Products Company)
At the consumer products manufacturer I’ve referenced throughout this series, the company was drowning in priorities. Everyone was working hard, but very little was finishing.
We implemented Quarterly Rocks.
For Q1, we selected:
Reduce changeover time by 20%
Launch daily Tier 1 huddles across production and customer service
Stabilize fulfillment accuracy at 98%+
Each Rock had 3–5 milestones and a single accountable owner.
The team reviewed each Rock weekly—Green, Yellow, or Red—with no storytelling and no excuses.
By the end of the quarter:
Changeovers dropped by 22%
Daily huddles were running in every major function
Fulfillment accuracy hit 99.1% and stayed there
Nothing magical happened.
The company simply stopped working on everything…
and started finishing the work that mattered.
That’s the power of Rocks done right.
The Big Shift
When Rocks are part of your operating system:
Priorities become clear
Progress becomes measurable
Strategy becomes execution
90-day sprints drive annual results
Rocks convert your strategic plan from a document into action.
If your team sets goals but rarely finishes them, it’s not a motivation problem—it’s a structure problem.
👉 Download my free eBook The Five Steps to Freedom at optaprofit.com/ebook
or take the Silver Bullet Scorecard to see how strong your execution system really is:
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