What Are Your Big Rocks?

Every January I ask each of my clients, “What are your Big Rocks for this year?”  

I am always surprised by how many of them are confused by the question—they either don’t know what I am talking about, or if they have heard the expression “Big Rocks” they don’t really know what it means.

Simply put, your Big Rocks are your priorities.  They are the tasks, projects, or goals you absolutely accomplish.  They are your mission-critical objectives—not items on a messy, sprawling to-do list.

People tend to run into three problems when they think about their priorities:

1. They have too many priorities.
2. They do not or cannot differentiate the truly important priorities.
3. For any number of reasons, they let other less-important things get in the way of focusing on what really matters.

Here’s an interesting trivia point:  The word “priority” entered the English language, via Old French, sometime in the 14th Century. Deriving from the mediaeval Latin word prioritas (“fact or condition of being prior”), the word meant “the most important thing”—the “prior” thing or the thing with precedence.  When it was first coined, the word “priority” had no plural.  You could only have one priority. 

Sometime in the middle of the 20th Century, almost certainly related to the rise of corporate and office culture, the word “priorities” began to appear. Now people began to claim that they had more than one “most important thing.”  They could have three or five or 14 priorities.  A client once shared with me a deck laying out his business’s “Top 30 Strategic Priorities.”  Sadly, if you have 30 priorities, you really have no priorities: no organization can even remember 30 things, never mind focus on them all.

Getting prioritization right means ensuring that you have a small number of clear goals, and that you are ruthless in focusing your time, energy, and other resources on accomplishing those goals—while at the same time not getting distracted by less important things.  As my friend Joshua Spodek likes to say, 

“You have to say ‘no’ to many good things to have a great life.”

However, it turns out that prioritizing can really hard.  As a senior executive you have a lot on your plate, and a large number of people demand your time, attention, labor, and share of mind. And it seems like some problem or unexpected issue pops up every week.  You try to be a good corporate citizen: you help out when asked (and even when not asked), you seek ways to add value, and you’re always willing to go the extra yard.  You work longer hours, and thanks to the wonders of technology you bring your work more and more into your personal time. The concept of “work-life balance” becomes background noise.  

You are busier. But are you more productive?

Successful people and organizations always find a way to keep their focus on the most things.  I’ve seen many different approaches so I’m not going to try to prescribe a single way of doing it. Ask any leader or creator you admire, from CEOs to entrepreneurs to artists, how she keeps what’s really important on the front burner, and you’ll hear many different tricks, tools, and “hacks.”  How you develop your Big Rocks isn’t as important as doing it.  

For over a decade I worked with the leadership of a high-growth company (average year-over-year revenue increases of 15-20%) who made “Big Rocks” a part of their corporate culture and operating processes.  Somewhere along the way they changed the term to “Boulders” and I didn’t bother to correct them since they clearly owned it and were doing it so well! 

If it seems like you’re busier and busier each year but somehow less productive, it’s time to break out of the cycle.  As you think about this year, be clear and explicit about your Big Rocks, the 4-5 (maximum) things you and your organization need to accomplish over the next 12 months.  (As a check, ask yourself “What are the handful of things I’ll get done this year that will make everyone say ‘this was a great year!’ when December comes around?”)  

Set clear goals for those 4-5 Rocks—and be honest about how you will measure success.  Share your Big Rocks with your team and all your important stakeholders.  Be politely firm about turning down or removing yourself from projects or tasks that will not advance the critical priorities.  Use your Big Rocks list as a weekly guide for where you (and your team) should be focusing the majority of effort and energy. (Hint: if someone asks you what your Big Rocks are and you can’t answer immediately, you’re not doing this right.)

The origin of the “Big Rocks” concept is unknown, but it was popularized by Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  Stories can be powerful metaphors, and once you’re heard this one you may find it easier and more intuitive to keep your Big Rocks front of mind.

The problem with doing too many things

Doing too many things means not finishing any one of them to your potential. Not many employers or team want generalists who don't show interest specifically in what they are looking for.  

You might be distracted.

Warren Buffet has a way to get things done that flies in the face of today's elite university and corporate culture. He suggests listing your top 25 priorities. Divide that list into the top 5 and bottom 20. Most people presume you work mostly on the top 5 and occasionally on the bottom 20.

On the contrary, he instructs working on the top 5 and avoiding the bottom 20 at all costs. Like the plague. They are the vampires of success, sucking your time and resources. Mainly your time, leaving you lifeless.

They are the path to mediocrity.

Having limited time and finite resources means saying "no" isn't declining one thing, but saying "yes" to something better, or at least enabling it. 

So what do you do with achievements that could distract? You've said yes to too many things. I recommend deciding what part of yourself you portray based on the other person's interests, if there's a fit. Instead of trying to figure out what achievements to highlight at interviews on his own, he would use the occasion to contact someone at the place he was interviewing to learn what they valued. Active listening, in other words. Then, after talking with that person, he would craft how to present a relevant focus to the job (assuming there was a fit). 

Excerpt from https://www.forbes.com/sites/hillennevins/2020/01/21/what-are-your-big-rocks/#2f3d0362fae3 by Mark Nevins

Excerpt from https://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/you-have-to-say-no-to-a-lot-of-good-things-to-have-a-great-life.htmlby by Joshua Spodek

[Side note:  I feel so strongly about prioritization that I dedicated a whole chapter of my latest book to the topic—and titled the chapter, with deliberate irony, “Hamster on a Wheel.”  If you have felt that way sometimes, or if you want to read more on staying focused, I also recommend Greg McKeown’s short and highly readable book Essentialism.]