Free Leaders to Focus on What Matters
Five Rocks is a weekly filter for identifying the work that's piled up at your level and no longer belongs there. It walks you through what to hand off, who should own it, and what has to change so the work doesn't just come back to you next time.
Bill writes about Five Rocks Leadership Filter in Chapter 13.
Get the book →Five Rocks is a weekly filter for identifying the work that’s accumulated at your level and no longer belongs there. At the end of each week, you review what you personally handled and pull out three to five items, your rocks, that someone else should have owned. For each one, you name who should be handling it and what’s actually stopping that from happening.
Most delegation advice stops at “hand it off.” Five Rocks starts from a different assumption: if the work keeps coming back to you, handing it off once was never going to fix it. A task doesn’t stay with a leader by accident. There’s usually a reason it keeps returning: an approval threshold set too low, a decision right that was never made explicit, a team member who hasn’t been coached to the point of readiness, stakeholders who’ve simply learned where to send it.
That’s what makes the third question the real work. It’s not enough to notice the rock or even to name who should be carrying it. You have to change whatever keeps sending it back to you, or the next version of the same task lands right back on your desk next week. Here’s how to run it.
Look back over the last one to three weeks and pull out work you personally handled that no longer needs you specifically. Pay attention to approvals, routine decisions, reports, and meetings where your presence has just become habit. Use real instances, not categories. "Vendor management" doesn't give you anything to act on. A specific thing you actually did last Tuesday does. Pick three to five. The limit keeps you focused on patterns worth changing instead of a wish list of everything you'd rather not do.
Example: You approved four purchase orders last week that were all under $5,000, well inside your team lead's existing authority. That's a rock.
For each rock, ask who's actually closest to the decision: who has the context, who lives with the consequences, who should be building judgment here. Sometimes the honest answer exposes a gap. The person doesn't have the information, the authority, or the coaching yet to own it well. That gap becomes part of what you're transferring, not a reason to keep the rock yourself.
Example: Your ops coordinator is closest to the vendor relationship and the invoice history, but she's never been told she has approval authority under $5,000. The rock belongs with her, and so does that authority.
Ask what's actually sending the work to you today, then fix that specific thing. Raise the approval threshold. Put the decision right in writing. Give someone access to the information they need. Tell stakeholders directly where the work should go from now on. A transfer only counts as done when the same task shows up next time and it doesn't land on your desk.
Example: You document the $5,000 threshold, tell the team it's official, and let the vendor relationship manager know your coordinator is now the approver of record.
The core technique stays the same — but how you apply it shifts depending on your role, your team, and your environment.
When a rock reveals that someone isn't ready to own it yet, don't just hand it off anyway and hope. Name specifically what's missing: information, authority, or reps at the decision. Give them that piece, then set a date to check whether the rock has actually stayed off your desk. Treat it as a development target with a real outcome attached, not a vague "grow into this."
At this level, your highest-value rocks usually aren't single tasks, they're entire categories of decision that keep climbing several levels before anyone below you feels authorized to act. Look for the pattern across multiple rocks rather than fixing them one at a time. One clarified decision boundary, documented and communicated, removes dozens of future escalations at once. Start there before you go task by task.
If you're early in a leadership role, watch for the instinct to keep rocks because you're faster at them than anyone else on your team. Speed is not the same as necessity. Use Five Rocks on your own workload first, before you ask your team to change how they escalate to you. You can't coach a team out of over-escalating if you're still modeling it yourself.
Watch your footing
The one-page Five Rocks Leadership Filter PDF reference, plus weekly tools and techniques to help you lead through uncertainty — from Bill's Lead for Tomorrow newsletter.
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PowerPlays are the techniques Bill teaches in his keynotes, workshops, and executive coaching engagements with organizations across the country.
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