Tool: Level 10 Meeting

EOS Level 10 Meeting

Overview:

The Level 10 Meeting is a structured, weekly meeting format within the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) designed to drive clarity, accountability, and issue resolution within leadership teams. The meeting follows a consistent agenda, emphasizes efficient reporting, and focuses on identifying, discussing, and solving critical issues. The goal is to create a highly effective meeting pulse that leads to continuous improvement and keeps the team "on the business."

Key Themes and Ideas:

1. Structured Agenda and Time Management:

• The Level 10 Meeting adheres to a strict agenda with specific time allocations for each section. This ensures the meeting stays on track and covers all essential areas.
• Agenda Items & Timing:Segue (Good News): 5 Minutes
• Scorecard: 5 Minutes
• Rock Review: 5 Minutes
• Customer/Employee Headlines: 5 Minutes
• To-Do List: 5 Minutes
• IDS (Issues List): 60 Minutes
• Conclude: 5 Minutes (Recap To-Do List, Cascading Messages, Rating)
• "The first and most important thing about the meeting is it always starts on time." It emphasizes starting on time.

1. Roles and Responsibilities:

• Two key roles are assigned:
• Meeting Runner: Facilitates the meeting, keeps it on track, and manages the IDS process. "The person who's going to keep us on track, make sure we start and end on time, facilitate ids. This is the person who secretly loves cutting people off in a meeting."
• Paperwork Manager: Brings the Level 10 agenda, scorecard, and rock sheet to the meeting. Manages to-do lists and issues lists during the meeting.
• Clear role definitions are crucial for efficient meeting execution.

1. Reporting Only (No Discussion):

• The Scorecard, Rock Review, and Customer/Employee Headlines sections are for reporting only. Discussions and debates are explicitly prohibited to maintain efficiency.
• Anything that is off track in these sections gets dropped down to the Issues List.
• "No discussions, no debates, no grandstanding. We just review our scorecard... Checking to see whether our five to 15 numbers are on track or off track. If anything is off track, we simply drop it down to our issues list."
• This reporting section focuses on three key areas: Numbers (Scorecard), Priorities (Rocks), and People (Customers & Employees).

1. To-Do List and Accountability:

• To-Do List is for reviewing weekly accountability.
• A to-do is defined as a 7-day action item with a single owner.
• "Rule of thumb, 90% of your to-dos need to drop off the issues list every week." This highlights the importance of completing tasks and maintaining accountability.
• Missing to-dos should be addressed. "One of the things I find almost always is they're just not capturing to-dos. And it's one of the best things we can do for them is to make them aware of how they're not."

1. IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve):

• The core of the Level 10 Meeting focuses on resolving issues.
• The Issues List is prioritized (top 3 most important), and each issue is addressed using the IDS process.
• "You never start at the top because sometimes the most important issue is buried right down here."
• IDS Process:Identify: Clearly define the root cause of the issue.
• Discuss: Have a focused discussion (one statement per person to avoid "politicking").
• Solve: Develop a plan to make the issue "go away forever," typically resulting in a to-do.
• "Rarely do they ever identify the root cause of the issue. Rarely do they ever get to the point where they solve issues. They spend all of their time discussing feeling productive but never really solving anything."

1. Conclusion and Continuous Improvement:

• The meeting concludes with:
• Recapping to-dos to ensure everyone is clear on their actions.
• Discussing cascading messages to ensure key information is communicated effectively.
• Rating the meeting on a scale of 1-10, with the goal of consistently achieving an "8 or better."
• "Working together as a leadership team to make our meetings better, getting you to the point where you're routinely achieving a level 10, thus the term level 10 meeting."

1. Commitment and Consistency:

• The Level 10 meeting should be scheduled at the same day and time every week and treated as a high priority. Rescheduling should be avoided.
• "There are two great reasons to miss a meeting. Vacation and death. And by that I mean your death."
• The meeting should be run even if only one person can attend. "The show must go on."
• "All of our clients use this meeting pulse and it will vastly improve the quality of your meeting."

1. EOS Implementer Observation:

• An EOS implementer will observe a Level 10 meeting after Vision Building Day 2 and before the first quarterly meeting.
• "Never sooner, never later."
• The implementer observes for 75 minutes, then provides 15 minutes of feedback.
• The feedback should focus on both form (adherence to the agenda) and substance (quality of discussion and issue resolution).

Key Considerations:

• The Level 10 Meeting is designed to be a regular, consistent practice.
• Adherence to the agenda and time allocations is crucial.
• Focus on identifying and solving the root causes of issues.
• Accountability and follow-through on to-dos are essential for success.
• Continuous improvement through meeting ratings and feedback is encouraged.

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