At Aileron, we not only teach professional management, we live it. We believe the DOC System of Professional Management empowers organizations to thrive for the long-term – even our own. The next time you’re on campus, you might see one of our latest professional management techniques in action. You can learn more about how we’re making our strategic priorities visible and memorable below.
Making priorities visible with rocks
Based on the concepts from the Rockefeller Habits, we have anchored to using rocks to move our most strategic work forward throughout the year.
Rocks are “specific, concrete tasks, projects, initiatives or goals that can be accomplished in one quarter that supports a transition or exploits strategy.”
Each quarter, our team identifies the 2-4 most pressing strategic initiatives that need team- or organization-wide attention. Those become our rocks for the quarter. We’ve seen our team stay focused and energized about large-scale projects, and it’s empowered us to get more work done in less time.
Empowering alignment
The benefit of anchoring to rocks is our team has been able to stay focused and aligned on the work we are doing. By defining our rocks, it has allowed us to stay on track and have a clear path to moving the work forward.
Examples of our rocks are:
- Evolving our DOC Model disciplines
- Exploring how we can be experts in customer intimacy
- Hiring a Director of Technology
- Evolving our systems and processes
Increasing our productivity
Since we have implemented rocks into our strategic work, we have seen an increase in the amount of progress we can make in a short amount of time. By choosing 2-4 priorities per quarter, we have been able to focus more intently on the work we are doing, allowing us to work at a more efficient cadence.
We have physical rocks displayed at our campus as visual reminders for our team and insight for our community about the work we are doing. Once we have accomplished the work for a rock, we place it in a rock garden in our Team Gazebo. For us, the rock garden symbolizes how focus can create progress and productivity.
Feeling inspired?
What are your organization’s rocks? We encourage you to place visual reminders of your organization’s priorities in your area of work for you and your team. We have seen how having a visual reminder of our rocks can trigger inspiration, motivation, and connection — and we hope it will do the same for you.
