Start With The Rocks

A few years ago, one of my colleagues, by the name of Bill Stratton of EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating Systems) was presenting a seminar as a guest speaker. His topic was an area that he knew extremely well – leadership. While I was familiar with much of his content (because I had read an excellent book called Traction by Gino Wickman), Bill reminded me of a point that I had never truly grasped before his presentation. He was talking about the importance of addressing the rocks.

Picture a college professor with a large jar filled with rocks up to the top of the container. The professor asks his students if the jar is full. They all agree that it is. He then proceeds to pour in gravel that fills in much of the space in between the rocks. Next, he pours in the sand that fills an additional space in between the rocks and gravel. Finally, he adds water right up to the brim of the jar. Obviously, the jar of rocks wasn’t full because there was so much more that could be added. The point that he was making for this experiment was this: If you don’t start by putting in the rocks — your most important priorities — they’ll never fit in later. All of the sand and gravel — the smaller nuisance projects that we face every day — will take up all of your time and space.

Bill Stratton specializes in helping businesses recognize what’s fundamentally most important to them. He makes sure that they place these priorities at the beginning of their business plans. Now, let’s think about your priorities. Are you making sure that your biggest projects are getting the most attention? Are you leaving enough time and resources to give them the focus they deserve?

Many times, we start out with the best of intentions and write down our goals, but we fail to organize them in the proper sequence. That means we may spend the majority of our time focusing on the unimportant and non-urgent tasks. If you make it your mission to focus primarily on the urgent and important first, and give your priorities the attention they require, you’ll find yourself accomplishing much more of what really matters.

“Plans are useless, but planning is essential.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Let me hear from you.

(This excerpt is taken from The Leadership Academy. I encourage you to click here to register for The Leadership Academy 5-part series which runs on five consecutive Tuesday mornings beginning on Tuesday, October 1, 2024, at Bellomo & Associates in York, PA from 9:00 AM to 12:00 Noon Eastern Standard Time.  Classes 2 and 4 will be presented exclusively on Zoom.