What Did You Actually Change Last Quarter?
Q3 just ended. You set rocks back in July. Be honest with yourself for a second: how many of them actually moved?
Not “we made progress.” Moved. Finished. Done. This isn't intended as a guilt trip. It's the most useful hour you'll spend as Q4 begins.
Back to Basics: you can't improve a quarter you never reviewed
Great coaches watch the game film before they adapt the practice plan. Not the highlights. The whole ugly reel.
The unglamorous fundamental is the same in business: you can't fix a quarter you never honestly graded. Sometimes leaders set fresh rocks without ever grading the old ones, and then wonder why next quarter looks like last quarter. It's important to capture the lessons learned.
When we were building our remodel company
Early on, we set goals every quarter and never once looked back at the last set. (We were self-implementing and didn't get the nuance of some parts of EOS). So we kept setting the same three goals, quarter after quarter, and calling it ambition. But, it wasn't ambition. It was amnesia.
The quarter where we finally sat down and discussed what didn't move, and why, was the quarter things actually started moving. Nothing magic happened. We just stopped pretending the misses hadn't happened.
A miss is information, not a failure
A rock that didn't move isn't a character flaw. It's a clue. There are really only four reasons a rock stalls: it wasn't a real priority, nobody truly owned it, the underlying issue wasn't identified, or the goal was wrong. All four are fixable. None of them get fixed if you look away.
The AI prompt
Here are some strategies to try this quarter. Paste this into the AI of your choice to run the review with you. Keep anything sensitive out of it.
Act as a quarterly review facilitator. I'll share the rocks or priorities I set for last quarter. Ask me one at a time whether each one actually moved: fully, partly, or not at all.
For anything that didn't move, ask me one honest question: was it not a real priority, did no one own it, did we identify the underlying issue, or was the goal wrong? Help me carry only the ones that still matter into next quarter. Keep me honest, not comfortable.
The trick is watching the film before you plan. You can't carry the right things forward until you're honest about what didn't move.
Bonus: The worksheet
I built you a one-page Quarter Review: grade each rock (moved, partly, didn't), diagnose the misses, and decide what to carry and what to drop. You can download it here.
Process creates freedom, and freedom starts with an honest look.
Grade last Q's rocks this week. Perhaps this includes the ones you've carried for two quarters. Then decide, honestly, whether you're packing it with you into the next quarter or abandoning it.
Hope this makes an impact!
Lisa
