Rocks Before Robots

How Integrators turn AI hype into traction—without blowing up the EOS® playbook

TL;DR
AI pilots die for three predictable reasons: no Rock, no owner, no metric.
Convert the shiny idea into a quarterly Rock, track it in every L10®, and let the Scorecard sort fact from fairy dust. Done right, AI becomes just another disciplined growth lever—​and you stay the calmest human in the room.

1 — The Pep-Rally Problem

If your LinkedIn feed feels like a 24-hour AI conga line, you’re not hallucinating.
Founders are giddy, sales is tinkering, ops is drowning in demos—and in the middle of that disco an Integrator is frantically waving a Scorecard like an airport marshal screaming, “Lanes, people, lanes!”

The excitement is justified. The chaos is optional.
Your job isn’t to pour cold water on innovation; it’s to funnel raw enthusiasm into the pipes of EOS®, turning shiny objects into quarterly Rocks and messy “let’s-just-try-it” experiments into solvable Issues. When you do, AI stops being a side project and starts compounding value like any other disciplined initiative.

2 — Origin Story: How One Rock Saved a Doomed Pilot

Company: Midwest machining shop · 45 people · $9.8 M ARR
Goal: Shave hours off quoting using an AI vendor “everyone on Reddit loves.”

Day 0 — Hype: Visionary signs the PO on a Tuesday.
Day 10 — Panic: Turnaround time is longer, error rate hits 23 %.
Day 40 — Near-death: Pilot lead juggling three hats; morale under floorboards.

Enter the Integrator. She slaps a yellow “⚠” on the Scorecard and reframes the chaos as a Q3 Rock:

Rock: “Cut quote cycle time by 30 % using AI.”
Owner: Production Controller (10 h/week carved out)
Metrics: Avg. Quote Hours & First-Pass Accuracy

By Week 5 of the Rock, accuracy lands at 97 % and cycle time drops from 6.4 h to 3.9 h—a 39 % win that sticks. No new vendor. No overtime. Just EOS discipline.

3 — The Trap of “AI-as-Side-Project”

Week 1 Visionary binge-watches ChatGPT videos → declares urgent pilot.
Week 3 Ad-hoc “tiger team” forms → nobody knows who owns what.
Week 12 Pilot stalls, results die lonely in Google Sheets, people mutter “AI doesn’t work.”

With no Rock, no owner, and no metric, AI remains a hobby. You get the smoldering remains—and the blame.

4 — Frame It or Forget It

Make AI a Rock—not a hobby, not a background experiment. Commit to:

Numbers can flex; the pattern can’t: clear scope, single owner, visible win.

5 — Five Steps to Carve a Bullet-Proof AI Rock

1. Audit the pain. Put dollars, hours, or NPS points on the table—no fuzzy feelings.
2. Pick one lever. Generative text, predictive alerts, RPA—one lever per quarter.
3. Name an owner. Committees own nothing; assign a single seat.
4. Attach a leading indicator. Response time, quote accuracy—catch drift early.
5. Budget a sandbox. Block calendar hours + <$2 k tooling so nobody begs in Week 10.

Pro tip: If the Rock title spans two lines, it’s probably two Rocks. Slice it.

6 — Keep AI Alive in the L10®

• Status Check. On track? Off track? Stuck?
• IDS™ the Blockers. Data access, change management, trust—solve roots, not symptoms.
• Broadcast Wins. Drop micro-victories in Headlines; nothing converts skeptics faster.

When AI shows up in your weekly rhythm, it graduates from science project to business process.

7 — Scorecard: Let the Numbers Talk

AI is the engine; Scorecard is the road. No road = joyrides and fender-benders.

8 — Scaling Beyond the First Rock

Quarterly Retro

Log wins + freed capacity. Redeploy that capacity intentionally.

AI Backlog Kanban

Rank future ideas by ROI × effort. In each quarterly planning session, pull the top card. Momentum stays; shiny-object fatigue fades.

Lightning Rocks (14–30 Days)

For true hair-on-fire market shifts, launch a Lightning Rock—short, surgical, owner gets full authority.

9 — Mini-Case: Lightning Rock in the Wild

Day 0 – 07:00 Competitor launches a “free forever” tier → churn risk 5 %.
Day 0 – 10:00 Integrator calls 10-min Market Pulse, spins up Lightning Rock:
“Retain 95 % of top-quartile customers.” Owner: CX Director, Budget: $18 k credits.
Day 2 – 16:00 First 60 at-risk accounts contacted → churn caps at 1.7 %, $312 k ARR saved.
Quarterly Rocks stay intact. Team morale rockets.

10 — Structure Drives Scale

AI doesn’t break EOS®—it needs EOS.
Frame the initiative as a Rock, solve friction in IDS™, and let the Scorecard prove the payoff. Done right, “AI” stops being a buzzword and starts behaving like any other high-value process you shepherd into the company.

AI Speed | EOS® Discipline
See you on the track. 🏁

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