Explains what a Quarterly is actually for: reviewing the last 90 days, aligning the leadership team, and building a real plan for the next 90
Covers the mindset to walk in with, including fighting for the greater good and staying curious
Breaks down the agenda section by section: check-in, review previous quarter, review the V/TO, set next quarter's Rocks, IDS, and conclude
Gives three concrete prep steps to do before the session: clean up Scorecard data, finalize Rock statuses, review the Issues backlog
Lists five classic mistakes that derail a Quarterly, from letting the day run too long to letting daily fires hijack the room
Shows how running the Quarterly inside Success.co keeps the plan alive past day one
We're writing this one fresh off our own Quarterly, having just come back from a day-long session with the whole leadership team. So if there was ever a good moment to talk about how to run one of these well, it's now, while it's all still fresh.
And honestly, we couldn't write this without crediting our EOS Implementer, Chris. The prep, the structure, the way the day actually delivers results, that's the product of her fantastic work guiding us through it. A lot of what follows is built on what she taught us. So if you've ever wondered what an EOS Quarterly actually looks like behind the scenes, here's the real thing.
What a Quarterly is actually for?
It's easy to look at a full day blocked off for a meeting and think: do we really need this? But a Quarterly isn't a status update or a glorified check-in.
To put it plainly, an EOS Quarterly Meeting is a structured, full-day strategic session designed to realign an entrepreneurial leadership team, evaluate past organizational performance, and establish clear operational priorities for the upcoming 90 days.
It exists to do three specific things: review how the last quarter actually went, get the leadership team aligned on the most important issues, and build a genuinely actionable plan for the next 90 days.
The reason it matters comes down to something Dan Zawacki, one of our partners, says really well. As entrepreneurial teams, we're all chasing more of four things: more structure, more growth, more profit, and more fun. If you lose sight of that, a day like this feels like unnecessary work. But when you remember the why, and connect it to your own life and what you personally want out of the business, the whole thing changes.
It stops being a meeting and starts being the lever that moves everything else.
The mindset to walk in with
Before the agenda, there's the headspace. Chris encourages the team to enter the room with a few core principles in mind.
First, you must always fight for the greater good of the organization, not your own corner of it.
Second, you have to simplify, simplify, simplify.
Third, you need to stay curious. Ask more questions than you answer, and assume the other person sees something you don't.
And finally, you must remember that we live in a 90-day world, and there's always something to learn from the last one.
These sound simple, but they change how the whole day goes. A team that walks in defending their turf has a very different Quarterly than a team that walks in genuinely curious and rooting for the company as a whole.
The EOS Quarterly agenda, section by section
When the clock starts, Chris keeps us tied to a proven agenda. It's designed to manage our energy and keep us from falling into rabbit holes.
The check-in
We always start by turning off the outside world. Everyone shares their bests from the last 90 days, both personal and professional, outlines what they see is working / not working in the business and states what they expect from the day. It only takes a few minutes, but it shifts our minds away from the daily operational fires so we can actually focus on the big picture.
Review the previous quarter
This is the accountability section, and it works in two parts. First, we look at the real numbers: revenue, profit, and the key measurables on our Vision/Traction Organizer (V/TO), so the whole team is working from the same facts rather than gut feelings. Then we go down the list of Rocks we set 90 days ago and mark each one "done" or "not done." If a Rock didn't cross the finish line, we don't fix it on the spot; it drops straight onto the day's Issues List to deal with later. By the end of the review, we give the quarter a rating - A to F.
Review the V/TO
Before we look forward, we reconnect with the bigger picture. We read back through our V/TO, our Core Values, Core Focus, and 10-Year Target, 3-Year Picture, to confirm the whole team is still on the same page about where the company is headed over the next three to ten years. We swiftly review how we are tracking towards our 1-Year Plan. Everything we decide next has to line up with this.
Set the next quarter's Rocks
Now we look forward. With the vision fresh in mind, we decide what the business absolutely must achieve over the next 90 days to stay on track. We debate, filter, and land on 3 to 7 Company Rocks, then Individual Rocks, making sure every single Rock has a clear owner and a measurable outcome.
Tackle the Issues list (IDS)
This is the heart of the day, where we spend the bulk of our hours. We pull together everything unresolved: what’s not working, the missed Rocks, the new obstacles that surfaced during the day. Then we prioritize the most important ones and work through them with IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve). We don't just talk about problems, we stay with them until we reach a real resolution.
Next steps and Conclude
We wrap up by evaluating the day itself. Everyone confirms their next steps, decides what needs to be cascaded to the rest of the company, and rates the meeting on a scale of 1 to 10. Chris always pushes us to hit an 8 or higher, making sure nobody walks out with unsaid words or lingering disagreements.
How to prepare in 3 steps
You cannot just show up to a Quarterly and wing it. If you don't do your homework beforehand, you waste the first three hours of the day just trying to figure out the facts. Our EOS ImplementerChris always has us execute three specific prep steps in the week leading up to the session.
First, you have to clean up your Scorecard data. Look back at the last 13 weeks of metrics. Identify where the team consistently hit the marks and where the numbers dropped below the line. Those red metrics are data-driven indicators of underlying issues, and they need to be pulled onto the agenda.
Second, you must finalize your Rock statuses. Show up to the room knowing exactly where your deliverables stand. If you are 90% done with a Rock, it is still "not done." Own the reality of your data before you walk through the door so the team doesn't waste time guessing.
Third, you need to dive into your Issues backlog. Every leadership team has a running list of long-term Issues. Review that backlog ahead of time so you know exactly which elephants in the room need to be dragged into the light.
Five classic mistakes teams make during their Quarterlies
Even when you know the playbook, human nature makes it incredibly easy to slip back into comfortable, sloppy habits. Looking across our own journey and what we see in the market, these are the five classic traps that derail a Quarterly.
Letting the day run way too long
When a session stretches into hour eight or nine because you didn't manage the clock, mental stamina completely bottoms out. People stop making smart strategic decisions and start saying "yes" to anything just so they can leave the room.
Walking away with no actionable decisions
It feels good to debate a massive company problem for two hours, but if you leave the room without a clear next step and a single owner attached to the resolution, you haven't solved anything. You just had an expensive conversation.
Copy-pasting Rocks from last quarter
If a major objective didn't get done, blindly carrying it over into the next 90 days without asking why it failed is a massive mistake. Sometimes a missed Rock means the target was wrong, the owner was overloaded, or the market shifted. You have to reset, not just duplicate.
People-pleasing and avoiding the danger
It is far easier to talk about a sexy marketing strategy than it is to address why a specific seat on the leadership team isn't executing. Sweeping the tough interpersonal or performance issues under the rug ensures your next 90 days will be just as frustrated as the last.
Letting daily fires hijack the room
The second you open your laptop to check a client email during a break, your brain slips right back into the weeds of the business. You have to protect the environment and stay at the 30,000-foot strategic view, or the day loses all its power.
Running our Quarterly inside Success.co
Everything you've just read, the Rocks, the V/TO, the Issues List, the Measurables, doesn't live on a whiteboard or a stack of printouts for us. It all lives inside Success.co, the platform we built to run EOS.
We don't just talk about Quarterlies in theory: we run our own inside the same software our customers use, which means we feel every bit of friction and every win firsthand. It's a big part of why we built it the way we did.
When we review the previous quarter, the numbers and the Rock statuses are already there, right where we left them. When we set new Rocks, we assign them to owners on the spot. When we work through the Issues List during IDS, we capture the To-dos as we go, so nothing gets lost the moment we walk out of the room. And when the day ends, the plan for the next 90 days is already documented and visible to the whole team, not buried in someone's notebook or still on a whiteboard
That's the part that makes the difference between a great day in the room and a quarter that actually delivers. The Quarterly sets the direction, but the platform is what keeps everyone moving in it for the next 90 days.
Coming off our own session we can say it works. If you're running these for your own team, our advice is simple: protect the day, prepare for it like it matters, and keep everything in one place so the plan you build is still alive on day 89.
