This is the second post in a multi-part series about internal meetings. “Part 1: Internal Meetings – Don’t hate them, hate the way they are practiced” set the stage for the value of internal meetings and that meetings which waste time should not suggest that all meetings are time wasters.
In this and the subsequent posts, we’ll turn our attention to a few of the teachings in Verne Hanish’s 2002 book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. Specifically, the focus is on the internal communications and meetings that are so critical for high-growth companies. To learn more about these processes and ideas you can get Mastering the Rockefeller Habits from any major bookstore. You can also learn more about this by attending one of Verne’s seminars, going online to the Gazelles, Inc website, from Rhythm Systems the producer of Rhythm, a a cloud-based software application that automates many of the processes defined in the book, or head to Gazelles International, an executive coaching organization helping companies use the Rockefeller Habits.
In Mastering the Rockefeller Habits’ Overview, Verne points out that the fundamentals in his book have a lot in common with parents raising children:
1) have a handful of rules
2) repeat yourself a lot and
3) act consistently with those rules
These simple ideas can be frustratingly difficult to keep in mind when your late for school, dishes haven’t been put away and the dog needs to be fed. It is similar with companies and Mastering the Rockefeller Habits is organized around three concepts to help companies consistently deliver:
1) Establish Priorities
2) Publish Critical Data and
3) Maintain a Rhythm.
I’ll touch on the first two briefly and then focus on creating and maintaining a corporate rhythm, which is what this multi-part series is about.
Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, centers around the One-Page Strategic Plan, which covers everything from core values, to purpose, to brand promise, to multi-year and annual plans, to the concept of a quarterly theme. The latter serves to focus the entire organization’s attention on achieving a few critical items each quarter and in my opinion is the linchpin in making this process successful. The quarterly theme is where the company establishes priorities and assigns resources,helping insure the right people are doing the right things at the right time. Of course, the ground work required to establish the company’s reason for being and longer term goals are critical to setting the quarterly priorities effectively.
Similarly, understanding the key performance metrics and drivers of success are necessary to effectively allocate resources and monitor progress. It is even more important to make sure employees understand how these metrics impact the organization and to have easy access to as near real-time information as possible.
With the key metrics in place, targets for a companies critical numbers, the three to five company objectives for the quarter tie the long-term goals and aspirations of the company to short term priorities which drive day-to-day activities. It is invaluable in establishing near-term priorities, and also in making an emotional connection between the employees of the company and the specific priorities that everyone is working together to achieve over the next ninety days. Because this set of activities and the communication around it are so important Mastering the Rockefeller Habits strongly encourages each company to creatively describe and announce the theme and to provide significant rewards when meeting these achievements each and every quarter. As you celebrate the victory and rewards for one quarter, you enthusiastically roll out the objectives and rewards for the next. Of course, this can only be done if the objectives are important and realistic and the rewards are meaningful.
Two things are worth mentioning here: 1) the three to five company objectives for the quarter must then direct the three to five objectives for each department and the three to five objectives for each person. Each of these must support one or more of the corporate objectives. As you can well imagine, it’s very important for the quarterly theme to capture the intellectual and emotional energy of the organization. A lot of thought needs to go into how the theme ties back to the overall companies vision, mission and values. And creative rewards for reaching that goal can help you to further make those connections with the corporate purpose.
The one thing that stood out to me when I first read Mastering the Rockefeller Habits that differentiated it from other quarterly planning processes was the focused activities to keep the few objectives in front of people on a weekly, and even daily, basis. How many times have organizations spent a few days putting together quarterly objectives only to discover a few days later the proverbial swamp is filled with alligators and at the end of the quarter being reminded “Oh, yeah, we said we were going to drain the thing this quarter.”? Mastering the Rockefeller habits forces a company into a repeatable rhythm, a regular pattern of prioritizing, communicating, and delivering on key objectives that becomes second nature to everyone in the entire organization.
Join me for the next session Part 3: Rockefeller Habits – Quarterly Theme.