The Road to Getting What You Want Is Paved with Rocks
Last week, in our EOS quarterly collaborative exchange, a phrase came up in our discussion that I've been sitting with ever since.
"The road to getting what you want is paved with rocks."
The room went quiet. I think everyone was the same thing I was: does that land right?
Because in English, "rocks" carries weight. Not the good kind. Rocks are obstacles. Things that slow you down, things you stub your toe on, things you have to carry. I’ve got a pile of them sitting at the end of my driveway right now, and they need to be moved.
Focus and Gain Traction
In EOS, rocks are your 90-day business priorities.
Here’s how it works: 3-7 rocks per quarter for the company, plus individual rocks as needed. Set rocks at Focus Day, again in Vision Building Day 2, then again at each quarterly and annual planning meeting. They remain steady constants, pursued in the whirlwind of daily operations. Progress reported on at every weekly L10. Ninety days later, you're either done or you're not.
It’s the core of gaining traction.
The word is deliberate. A rock isn't a wish. It isn't a vague intention sitting in a someday-maybe list. It has weight, which means it's real, which means someone owns it, which means it either got done or it didn't.
We work together to identify the right 3-7. We connect them to your Vision, all the way down through the strategic cascade, from your 10-year target to your 3-year picture to this year's goals, down to what you're committing to in the next 90 days. We simplify the enormous and make it walkable.
But here's what I've learned from sitting with leadership teams on the EOS side, and sitting with executives on the True Course coaching side.
The rocks aren't the variable.
The stance you bring to them is.
Are they obstacles in your way or stepping stones to your dreams?
A Tale of Two Leaders
I see two types of leaders with nearly identical rocks respond in completely different ways.
Same quarter. Same level of challenge. Same company context.
One leader arrives at the quarterly table already tired. There's a resignation in how he reads his rock list, like a man looking at a sentence he didn't choose. He got some of them done. The ones that fit in the cracks between everything else. The whirlwind took the rest.
The other leader looks at the same kind of list and something in her posture shifts slightly. 3-7 specific things that actually moved the needle. 3-7 steps on a path she chose. The rocks weren't an addition to her job. They were the job, the real job.
Same rocks. Completely different experience. Completely different results quarter after quarter.
What changed? Nothing external. Something internal.
This is the question at the heart of a True Course coaching conversation: Who would you choose to be?
Not what should you do.
Not what's the right process.
Who would you choose to be in relationship to these rocks?
Shifting Your Stance
Most leaders, when they're struggling with their rocks, are running the conventional program without knowing it. It sounds like this: "When I get through these rocks, when I've hit the numbers, when the business gets to where it needs to be, then I'll feel good about this. Then I'll be the leader I want to be."
Have the results. Do the work. Become who I want to become.
The sequence is backwards.
The Be→Do→Have inversion is the most practical thing I know about how humans actually work. Who you're being is first. The doing flows from the being. The results follow the doing. Not the other way.
A leader who shows up to their rocks as stepping stones, as the 3-7 things that actually carry them toward the place they said they wanted to go does different work. Not harder. Different. The rocks feel lighter because they're being stood on, not carried.
A rock you step on gets you somewhere.
A rock you carry just gets heavier.
How the doing gets easier
So the question I'm sitting with as we move towards the second half of the year isn't just: are these the right rocks?
That's a good question, and I hear it all the time.
But underneath it: am I the right person stepping on them?
Am I someone who sees the road ahead, marked out in 90-day increments, connected to a vision that actually matters, as a gift? Here for me!
Or am I treating the next quarterly like another obligation arriving on the calendar?
The answer to that question lives upstream of any rock I could set.
It lives in the domain of being, not doing.
And that is exactly where the road to getting what you want actually begins.
Sweet Earth Orchard Update
We finally got the CO! Move in is happening and we can’t wait to host you for a Farm Walk or Farm Dinner soon.
I was reading some research recently from Stanford that says you are 60% more creative when you are walking. Since we're here in Colorado I believe that walking outside is even better especially under the watchful, caring eye of Long's Peak.
So who would you have to be to choose to come for a walk on the farm? Reach out if you would like to get on the list, there are limited spots available.
If this landed for you, I'd love to hear what came up. Email me — I read every one.
Or, if you're at that point where 90 days feels manageable but the vision still feels out of reach, let's talk. Book a conversation