Big Rocks
A 'big rock' is a medium-term goal we want to achieve in the coming few months that will be a major positive improvement in the business.
It's too easy to get pulled into running round the hamster wheel of finding and serving clients and doing the day-to- day admin. Important things get pushed down the priority list in favour of urgent things.
Stephen Covey (author of the '7 Habits of Highly Effective People') has a metaphor in which he talks about fitting in the ‘big rocks’ first, then you can pour the pebbles and sand around them — whereas if you put in the sand and pebbles first you can't fit in the big rocks.
In the same way, we want to identify 3-5 big things that will help our business take a leap forward over the next three months.
How to define a Big Rock?
To be useful it's important that we define and write big rocks well. A rough guide is that Big Rocks should be:
Focused on an outcome, rather than an activity or output
Directed towards achieving our Purpose & Ambitions
Aligned with our points of Focus
Supporting our values, motivations
A significant and worthwhile improvement in our business
Within our power
Potentially achievable within three months
Written without specifying how the outcome might be achieved
A Big Rock is a bit like an Epic in an agile project.
Examples
Here are some examples of badly-defined Big Rocks:
"Improve public sector procurement": this isn't directly within our power.
"Write a page about Big Rocks in the cookbook": this is an activity rather than an outcome, and is achievable by one person within less than a day. It's not a significant enough improvement in the business.
"Launch Convivio in 5 other countries": this isn't achievable within three months, and it's not directed towards our purpose and ambitions
Here are some examples of well-defined Big Rocks (these might change as we learn how to best write them):
"Launch our new branding"
"Introduce a fair and transparent way to set pay and pay rises"
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