When Your Team Loses Focus: The 30-Day Reset To Get Back On Track

It happens more often than most leaders admit. January begins with energy and clear goals following annual planning season, but within a few weeks, the team veers off course. It becomes hard to tell who owns which steps of the new initiatives, and valuable time and energy get tied up in duplicated work or meetings spent trying to sort out responsibilities.

This isn’t about strategy. It’s about execution. And it starts with one simple but important truth: The habits you and your team establish in January shape the rest of the year.

When your team sets clear agreements early and follows through consistently, they gain alignment, solve issues faster, and create the kind of disciplined execution the business needs to achieve the goals you’ve set.

If you began the year energized but are starting to feel burned out and hopeless already, you don’t need to rethink your entire vision. You need to reset how your team works. Let’s talk about how you can do that with a 30-Day reset.

Why Early-Year Execution Matters

I’ve seen dozens of teams fall into the same trap: They leave annual planning aligned and energized, but once the real work begins, the day-to-day reveals where things still aren’t fully defined. A Rock that felt clear in the session suddenly raises questions. Scorecard numbers aren’t being updated because no one’s certain which data source to use or who’s supposed to be updating them. A Level 10 Meeting® gets moved, and the team starts working through important topics in smaller groups instead of solving them together.

These early missteps make the work harder than it needs to be. People spend time figuring out who owns what Rocks instead of moving priorities forward. Leaders revisit the same questions they thought they settled weeks ago. Execution slows not because the team is unfocused, but because ownership and structure aren’t fully locked in.

This is why January matters. It’s the first test of whether your Rocks, Scorecard, and meeting pulse are strong enough to support the goals you set. When those tools are clear and used consistently, your team gains confidence early and builds the kind of follow-through that carries well past the first quarter.

The 30-Day Reset Your Team Needs

When a team realizes January isn’t going as planned, the instinct is often to push harder with more activity, more meetings, and more pressure. But that’s only going to add to the confusion. A reset isn’t about adding more work on top of already busy schedules. It’s about realigning so everyone can execute with confidence. Here’s a simple 30-day plan you can run with your team to get everyone on the same page and get your business moving in the right direction again.

Week 1: Reconfirm Rocks

The first week is about alignment. Before the team moves forward, confirm that every Rock is realistic, clearly defined, and fully owned. Most execution problems start with unclear Rocks, so Week 1 focuses on tightening the foundation.

Complete these steps:

• Review each Rock with its owner and confirm it can be completed in the next 90 days.
• Restate each Rock using clear, measurable success criteria. (I suggest using the SMART framework here.)
• Break the Rock into 3–5 quarterly milestones.
• Assign one owner to each milestone and confirm the first milestone begins this week.
• Document everything in your business operating system (BOS) so the team is working from the same set of agreements.

Week 2: Audit the Scorecard

Week 2 is about restoring clarity to the numbers your team relies on. A Scorecard only works when the data is updated weekly, every measurable has a single owner, and each number gives you a predictive view of the business. This week ensures the Scorecard becomes a tool that helps you truly understand where your company is, not just a report you glance at.

Complete these steps:

• Confirm your Scorecard includes 5–15 leading indicators the team can influence weekly.
• Replace any outcome-based or lagging numbers with measurables that show early movement.
• Assign one clear owner to each measurable and confirm they can access the data reliably.
• Set firm weekly targets so the team knows exactly what “on track” means for each number.
• Update everything in the Scorecard and reinforce that numbers must be reported every week without exception.

Week 3: Tune the Level 10 Meeting®

Week 3 is about strengthening the meeting pulse throughout the entire organization. The Level 10 Meeting only works when every team runs it consistently, uses the agenda as designed, and treats it as the primary forum for reviewing data and solving issues. Your role this week is to confirm that L10s are happening everywhere and happening well.

Complete these steps:

• Confirm that every team has a weekly L10® scheduled and that it appears clearly on each team member’s calendar.
• Review L10 agendas across departments to ensure teams are following the EOS® agenda, not adjusting or skipping elements.
• Check that each team is reviewing its Scorecard and Rocks weekly and marking them as on-track/off-track.
• Sit in on at least one departmental L10 to observe how the team uses IDS® and how effectively issues are being resolved.
• Reinforce with team leaders that the L10 is nonnegotiable, and teams need to report updates in the BOS so leadership has visibility into progress.

Week 4: Run a System Check

Week 4 is about making sure the structure you’ve tightened over the past three weeks can actually support the quarter ahead. This isn’t about adding new work. It’s about confirming priorities, tightening your tools, and ensuring the whole team is operating from the same system. A straightforward check now prevents confusion later in the quarter.

Complete these steps:

• Review To-Do completion to confirm weekly follow-through.
• Clean up the Issues list by removing outdated items and prioritizing what truly needs attention.
• Confirm that each Rock directly supports the 1-Year Plan.
• Bring the V/TO® back into discussion so the team reconnects weekly work to long-term direction.
• Make sure Rocks, issues, To-Dos, and measurables are fully documented in your BOS so everyone is operating from the same source of truth.

The most effective teams use Ninety to keep all of this work visible so nothing gets lost in separate tools or personal systems. And this is where the first 30 days become so important. In EOS, the quarter is your 90-Day World®. The habits you reinforce in the first month determine the Traction® you’ll have for the remaining 60 days. When you treat January as the on-ramp to your quarter, you give your team the structure, discipline, and alignment they need to execute with confidence.

What Happens After the Reset

A reset is only the starting point. The next question is whether the team can sustain the clarity and consistency they’ve built. The strongest teams don’t treat a reset as a one-time correction. They use it to establish a rhythm that carries throughout the rest of the quarter and the year.

Once agreements are clear, the goal is to make weekly execution predictable. That means updating the Scorecard every week, checking Rock progress without exception, and solving at least one meaningful issue in each Level 10 Meeting®. When those habits stick, people know what to expect and how to prepare.

Leadership behavior becomes especially important here. When leaders update their own measurables, bring real issues to the table, and follow the process the same way they want others to, the rest of the team follows suit. And when everything lives inside Ninety, the team stays aligned without having to chase information across different tools or conversations.

This is how teams avoid the mid-quarter frustration that shows up as “nothing’s working.” When the reset leads to consistent weekly habits, the organization stays focused, the work feels manageable, and the goals you set in planning feel achievable again.

Start the Reset, Strengthen Your Year

A 30-day reset isn’t complicated, and it isn’t theoretical. It’s four weeks of intentional work that puts your team back in control. When you reconfirm Rocks, tighten your Scorecard, strengthen your Level 10 Meeting®, and clean up your system, you create a level of clarity that changes how the team operates for the rest of the quarter.

The key is consistency. Once your team experiences how much faster issues get solved when the EOS tools are used fully and intentionally, the reset becomes the new standard. And when everything lives inside Ninety, the structure becomes easier to maintain because the team sees the same information, uses the same tools, and works from the same set of agreements.

If the year didn’t start the way you hoped, you still have time. Run the reset. Use the first 30 days to reestablish the habits that drive execution and give your team the confidence and clarity they need to execute all year long.

Give your reset a real system behind it. Try Ninety now and turn the habits you build in the next 30 days into consistent execution all year.