Anyone who knows me knows that I am a bandit for productivity. Total nerd, I know. I’m especially big on prioritisation, and I love a simple framework.

One framework I come back to all the time is Big Rocks.

I was first exposed to it years ago while working with Product Managers. I love the way good PMs think. They’re relentlessly focused on the customer and always come back to one guiding principle: what problem are we trying to solve? Spending so much time with them really helped shape the way I think about things, and I’m a better operator for it.

When I apply that kind of product thinking to my work (with the member as the customer) it really helps me to prioritise where I’m spending my time and energy.

You know those days where you get to the end of it, you haven’t stopped, you’re knackered, but you can’t name a single thing you did all day?

It’s not because you didn’t spend the day working hard, doing your best for your members. It’s because your attention is being spent on solving the wrong problems, instead of working towards your Big Rocks.

What the Hell are Big Rocks, Donna?

If you’re not familiar with the Big Rocks concept, it’s really simple.

Think of your resources – your time, your energy, your knowledge – as space in an empty jar. Beside the jar, you have a pile of rocks, a pile of pebbles and a pile of sand.

The Big Rocks are your priorities. They’re the major projects or strategic goals – your mission-critical objectives. It might be revenue growth, or delivering an advocacy result.

The Pebbles are important but smaller tasks that need to be done. They could be things like improving a landing page, fixing a bug in your AMS, or updating marketing collateral.

The Sand is all the other low impact but ever-present tiny little things that pile up in our work days. Tasks like responding to emails and attending meetings and answering ‘one quick question’.   

If you put the sand and the pebbles in the jar first, they’ll fill the whole thing. There’s no room left for the Big Rocks.

Put Your Big Rocks in Your Jar First

But when you put the Big Rocks in first, there’s heaps of room for them. And still, the pebbles and the sand always manage to find ways to fit around them.

The Big Rocks framework is about understanding you can’t do everything at once. It forces you to be choiceful about what you do (and don’t do).

In practice it looks something like this:

Identify the Big Rocks: These are the most critical goals or outcomes (e.g. launch a new revenue stream, increase member retention by 15%). It’s important you can quantify why they’re a priority – what impact they’ll have and how. We need X so that Y. It can’t just be vibes!

Schedule the Big Rocks first: Block dedicated time in your calendar and your teams’ calendars, to work towards the Big Rocks, before anything else. Treat that time as sacred (this is the hardest part!).

Add in the Pebbles: Fit the important but shorter-term tasks and work around the rocks (not before the rocks).

Pour the Sand in last: All the small routine tasks fit in the remaining gaps. There will be time for them. Think about it – have you ever got the end of the week and thought ‘man, I wish I’d had time to go to more meetings’? Of course not. Because for some reason we put those things in first – the sand always gets done! But it doesn’t move the needle on anything.

Big Rock Thinking Helps Your Team Deliver The Results You Want

Membership sits at the intersection of systems, people, governance, and experience – sometimes not owned cleanly by one role or team. Success is multi-dimensional. Acquisition, engagement, retention, value delivery, satisfaction and growth are all pieces of the puzzle. Sometimes, that leads to conflicting or even opposing priorities, because we’re working towards different objectives within the same organisation.

Plus, when your team aren’t 100% clear on key priorities, any request can feel equally important. A board question, a member complaint, an event catering detail, a system glitch – they all feel urgent.  

So, they default to what feels safest: handling what’s in front of them or getting things off their desk and onto someone else’s. It feels productive but it doesn’t make any real impact.

When you know what the organisation’s Big Rocks are, then you know what your Big Rocks are, and you cascade that down to your team and they know what their Big Rocks are, and suddenly everyone is paddling in the same direction towards the same goals.

Make a Choice

The start of a new year is a great time to think about your association’s Big Rocks.

If you don’t deliberately make space for the Big Rocks, the year will fill itself in without them.

They won’t get looked at “when things quiet down”. It never quiets down.

You have to choose to focus on them. Protect time for them. Say no to some of the pebbles to make room for them.

That doesn’t mean ignoring day-to-day work. I live and work in the real world, and I know that stuff just has to get done.

It means being deliberate about your choices. If we do X, then we can’t do Y. In order to achieve A, we have to do B first, even if it means C has to be put off.

It’s not always easy. But I promise you, it is effective.  

Get clear on what the Big Rocks are for your association. Prioritise them. Cascade them down to your teams. Work on those things first. Give your team permission to lock in. And celebrate as the results begin to speak for themselves (and please tell me about it because I live for this stuff)!