Rockefeller Habits
Definition
The Rockefeller Habits are ten management disciplines codified by Verne Harnish in Mastering the Rockefeller Habits (2002) and later carried into Scaling Up. Named after the operating practices of John D. Rockefeller, they group into priorities, data and rhythm, and are scored as a checklist so a leadership team can see which habits are genuinely in place rather than merely intended.
The list runs from habit one, a healthy and aligned executive team, to habit ten, a company story that every employee can tell. In between sit the ones most teams recognize: everybody can name the quarter's top priority; a communication rhythm of daily huddles, weekly and monthly leadership meetings, and quarterly and annual planning; a small set of numbers reported weekly by every person; and employee and customer feedback collected routinely and routed to whoever can act on it. Teams grade each habit red, yellow or green, then work on two or three at a time rather than attempting all ten.
The checklist is easy to score and hard to sustain. Rhythm usually lapses first — a daily huddle survives a busy month less reliably than a written priority does — and because the habits reinforce one another, the ones that quietly slip are often the ones holding the others up.
Example
A 70-person distributor graded itself green on four habits, yellow on three and red on three at annual planning. It worked only on the two reds tied to rhythm: a 12-minute daily huddle and a weekly metrics review. By the next quarterly session, three habits it had not touched directly had moved from yellow to green.
See also: Scaling Up software