How to Assign and Reassign Rocks in Ninety

In Ninety, every Rock (a 90-day priority) is owned by exactly one person: the team member accountable for seeing it through to completion. Assigning the right owner at the start of the quarter and knowing how to reassign when responsibilities shift keeps your team's accountability clear. Any Owner, Admin, Manager, Implementer, or Managee/Team Member on a paid plan can assign and reassign Rock ownership.

Why Rocks have a single owner

Each Rock in Ninety has one owner. This is by design and reflects a core principle of the Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS®): accountability requires a single person who is responsible for the outcome, even when multiple people contribute to the work.

The Rock owner is the person accountable for ensuring the Rock gets completed, not necessarily the person doing all the work. Milestones within a Rock can be assigned to other team members to distribute the work while maintaining accountability.

Ninety does not support assigning multiple owners to a single Rock. If you need multiple people involved, assign the Rock to the person accountable for the outcome and use milestones to assign specific tasks to contributors.

Assigning an owner when creating a Rock

Assigning an owner is a required step during Rock creation. The Create Rock button remains inactive until both a team and an owner are selected.

When creating a Rock, keep in mind:

• The list of available owners is filtered by the team selected in the Team field.
• If you use the Create button in the top navigation, you will be the default owner. Update the owner field before saving if the Rock belongs to someone else.
• In the Rocks tool, you can click + Add Rock directly on a team member's card to pre-populate them as the owner.
• Observers cannot own Rocks and will not appear in the owner dropdown.

Reassigning a Rock's owner

You can reassign a Rock's owner at any time from the Rock's details panel. You do not need to be the Rock's current owner to reassign it — any Owner, Admin, Manager, Implementer, or Managee/Team Member on a paid plan can make this change.

To re-assign a Rock's owner:

1. Click Rocks in the left navigation.
2. Confirm the correct team is selected in the Team dropdown.
3. Click the Rock you want to update to open its details panel.
4. Click the profile icon in the top right of the details panel.
5. Select the new owner from the list of team members.

Changes save automatically. For a full list of other editable fields, see Editing and Updating Rocks.

How Rock assignment affects quarterly conversations

Rocks only appear in a team member's Quarterly Conversation™ when two conditions are met:

• The Rock is directly assigned to that team member, not to their manager or anyone else on the team.
• The Rock's due date falls within the date range selected for the conversation.

If a Rock is assigned to a manager, it will not populate in a direct report's Quarterly Conversation even if the direct report contributed to the work. To include a Rock in someone's Quarterly Conversation, make sure it is owned by that person before the conversation is created.

For more on how Quarterly Conversations work, see Quarterly and Annual Reviews.

Creating a private or personal Rock

Rocks in Ninety are always associated with a team and are visible to all members of that team. There is no standalone "private Rock" type. However, you can create personal Rocks that only you can see by using a private team.

To set up a private Rock:

1. Create a new team and set its visibility to Private.
2. Add only yourself as a member.
3. Create Rocks within that team as normal.

Because the team is private, its Rocks are only visible to its members; in this case, just you. For help creating a team, see Creating New Teams.

Troubleshooting

The person I want to assign isn't appearing in the owner dropdown. The owner list is filtered by the selected team. Confirm the correct team is chosen in the Team field. If the person still doesn't appear, they may not be a member of that team, or they may have an Observer role. Ask your Owner or Admin to check their team membership and role.

I need multiple people to own a Rock. Rocks support one owner. Assign the Rock to the person accountable for the outcome, then use milestones to assign specific tasks to other contributors. Milestone owners receive their own notifications and can mark milestones complete independently.

My Rocks aren't showing up in a team member's Quarterly Conversation. Confirm that the Rock is directly assigned to the team member being reviewed — not to their manager. Also, confirm that the Rock's due date falls within the conversation's date range. Both conditions must be met for the Rock to appear. See Quarterly and Annual Reviews for details.

I reassigned a Rock, but the original owner still sees it. Rocks remain visible to all members of the assigned team regardless of who owns them. The previous owner will continue to see the Rock on the team's Rocks page; they just won't receive ownership notifications for it going forward.