Rockefeller Habits / Scaling Up

Ten execution habits, borrowed from how Standard Oil actually ran, that stop a growing business from losing discipline exactly when it can least afford to.

Ten habits line up for scoring, then narrow down to the single one you'll fix first.

Score, prioritise, fix one habit at a time.

Reach for this when…

The business has grown past the point where everyone just knows what matters this quarter.
Meetings have multiplied but nothing gets decided faster.
You suspect the team is busy but not aligned on the one number that matters.

How to run it

Score the leadership team against the ten habits: a healthy, aligned exec team; one aligned quarterly priority; a real communication rhythm; named accountability on every process; ongoing employee input on obstacles and opportunities; customer feedback data as current as the financials; live core values; employees who can state the strategy accurately; everyone able to say if they had a good day or week; and plans and performance visible to all.
Identify the two or three weakest habits.
Pick one habit to fix per quarter, not all of them at once.

A worked example

Situation. Anna Kowalska co-founded a specialty coffee roasting company that had grown from one Krakow, Poland, cafe to eleven, and could no longer say what the whole company was actually prioritising that quarter.

Applied. The leadership team scored themselves against the ten habits and came out weakest on one: no consistent communication rhythm beyond an occasional group text.

Result. They fixed just that one habit first, a 15-minute daily huddle and a proper Monday leadership meeting, before touching anything else. The next quarter's priority was, for the first time, something every store manager could actually name.

Priya's Toronto team found their weakest habit was communication rhythm.

The catch

The checklist rewards businesses that are already reasonably well run; a company in real crisis needs triage, not ten habits at once. Scoring yourself honestly on healthy executive team is also hard to do from inside that team.

Fixing all ten habits in one quarter is how none of them stick.

Origin: Verne Harnish

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