The Level 10 Meeting™
For most of us, Monday mornings are a long search for the right level of caffeine to make up for our lack of sleep. We’ve been as guilty of this as anyone. But larger forces intervened that reshaped our business and made Monday mornings fun. A minor miracle in the form of a Level 10 Meeting™.
Getting a Grip
A year ago, we implemented the Traction® framework.
The books “Traction” and “Get a Grip” lay out the Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS®). EOS® is a toolkit for getting the most out of your business.
One of the EOS® “subsystems” is a weekly Level 10 Meeting™, which we have been holding every Monday morning. And at the risk of being dramatic, nothing has been the same since.
What is a Level 10 Meeting™?
Level 10 Meetings™ keep every member of your leadership team on the same page. The meetings take about ninety minutes once a week (yes, every week). They follow a specific agenda so that each leader is aware of your company’s larger picture.
According to “Get a Grip”, “The ninety minutes you invest each week will revolutionize the way you work together and save each of you at least twice that much time on unproductive communication, lost opportunities, and crisis management each week.”
So without further ado, let’s take a look at what actually happens in these meetings.
Level 10 Meeting™ Agenda
- Segue (Good News) — 5 minutes
- Scorecard — 5 minutes
- Rock Review — 5 minutes
- Customer and Employee Headlines — 5 minutes
- To-Do List — 5 minutes
- item 1
- item 2
- etc.
- Issues List (IDS™) — 60 minutes
- Conclude — 5 minutes
- Recap To-Dos
- Cascading Messages
- Rating 1-10
Seems simple enough, right? Before you know it, these meetings will transform your company’s productivity. They’ll also instill true accountability. But first, let’s explain some of the meeting terms in the context of EOS®.
Scorecard
The Scorecard is a collection of your most important metrics and measurables. Every company’s Scorecard will be different. You will most likely break them up by department. You should collect the information for the Scorecard before the meeting.
Rocks
Rocks are the larger goals or projects for each quarter. Rocks should always use “SMART” attributes — specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.
In the context of the Level 10 Meeting™, each leader reports if their Rocks are on-track or off-track. Off-track rocks, like off-track Scorecard metrics, move to the Issues List. (More on that later.)
To-Do List
You assign items on the To-Do List to one person who agrees to complete the task before the next Level 10 Meeting™. When you review the To-Do List the next week, each person will report if their To-Do is To-Done. If not, the To-Do item also goes to the…
Issues List
The Issues list is where your team gets to dig into the meat of problem-solving for your business. The Issues list is where your team will spend most of their time during these meetings.
Tackling Issues, as “Get a Grip” states, is “the real magic of what makes meetings great.” The book offers a structure to make sure you address what could be thorny problems for your company.
Resolve Issues with a three-part system: Identify, Discuss, Solve (IDS™). Once you collect and rank the issues, you and your team can Identify the root cause of the issue. Next, discuss potential solutions. Finally, solve the issue by adding measurable action items to the To-Do list.
(Pro Tip: We created a shared IDS™ document that everyone on our team can access and add to. It’s sort of like a transparent suggestion box.)
Why Do We Start Every Week with a Level 10 Meeting™?
The answer should be pretty clear by now, right?
Since we adopted the EOS® framework, Level 10 Meetings™ keep our finger on the pulse of our company. This helps us stay engaged in our overarching direction.
Monday mornings aren’t about dragging ourselves to the office after the weekend. We’ve turned that obstacle into an opportunity. Now we get excited about our goals and work to make our company better.
