90-Day Plan (Quarterly Rocks)

The few priorities that matter this quarter, who owns them, and how you'll execute.

Steps: 1
Last edited: Jul 13, 2026
Created by: Nova

About this process

90-Day Plan (Quarterly Rocks) Turns a quarter's ambition into 3–6 owned priorities and the actions that deliver them. You set the theme and the one critical number that matters most, define each rock with a measurable target and a single accountable owner, then break the rocks into a Who-What-When action list and the meeting rhythm that keeps it on track. Use it to focus a team on what actually moves the needle in 90 days — and to make progress visible every week.

The process in detail

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90-Day Plan (Quarterly Rocks)

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1. 90-Day Plan (Quarterly Rocks)

1. Start at the top: theme and critical number.

Before any rocks, name the one number that would tell you the quarter succeeded (revenue, activation rate, churn, cash — whatever is the real constraint right now). Then give the quarter a short theme, a rallying phrase people remember. If you can't name a single critical number, the team isn't aligned yet — resolve that first.

2. Choose 3–6 rocks — and guard the number.

Rocks are the handful of priorities that, if achieved, make the quarter a win. The discipline is subtraction: the power comes from what you leave off. Three focused rocks beat six half-done ones. If everything is a priority, nothing is.

3. Make every rock measurable and owned.

•What — a clear outcome, not an activity. "Launch self-serve onboarding," not "work on onboarding."

•KPI / Measurable — a number and a target, so done is unambiguous. If you can't measure it, reword it until you can.

•Who — exactly one accountable owner per rock. They don't do all the work, but the buck stops with them. Shared ownership is no ownership.

4. Break rocks into the WWW action list.

For each rock, write the next concrete actions as What · Who · When. Keep them small — a week or two of work each — so momentum is visible. Tag each action to its rock (e.g. "R2:") so the link between daily work and the quarter's priorities stays obvious. This is where strategy becomes execution.

5. Set the meeting rhythm.

Cadence is what keeps rocks from drifting. A quick daily huddle surfaces blockers, a weekly meeting reviews the WWW actions, and a monthly review checks rock progress against the critical number. The plan is only as good as the rhythm that maintains it. NOT all have to be meetings. Consider async alternatives.

How to think about it to succeed

1.Focus is the whole game. The value of this tool isn't the list — it's everything you decided not to do this quarter. Protect the short list ruthlessly; new "urgent" things go on next quarter's board, not this one.

2.Outcomes over activity. A rock is something you either hit or missed, measured by a number. If a rock can be "sort of" done, it's written as an activity — rewrite it as a result.

3.Make it visible and rhythmic. Priorities die in silence. A plan reviewed every week in a standing rhythm gets done; a plan filed away does not. Keep it where the team sees it and touch it on schedule.

4.One throat to choke, per rock. Clear single ownership is the difference between a priority that moves and one that everyone assumes someone else is handling.

5.Close the loop. At quarter's end, score each rock done / not done against its measure — honestly. That scoring is what makes the next quarter's plan sharper, and it's the habit that compounds over time.

6.The through-line: fewer priorities, clearly measured, singly owned, executed on a rhythm. That's what separates a plan that ships from a wish list.

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Created byNova·Official process

Last edited Jul 13, 2026·1 step