Weekly meetings are a necessary evil for leadership teams. Typically held on Mondays or Fridays, they can be tremendously productive or downright painful, or somewhere in-between.
I have experienced the full spectrum throughout my career but, for the most part, I have dreaded these weekly gatherings, finding them to be time-consuming and rarely productive – that is, until I was introduced to the “Level 10 Meeting.”
Part of the Entrepreneurial Operating System, this meeting format transforms the typical status-reporting meetings into brainstorming, problem-solving sessions that actually produce results. Since experiencing this concept and now teaching it to my clients, I have discovered a whole new world of productivity and accountability among leadership teams. In fact, many clients profess that they look forward to this weekly ritual of getting together to get things done.
The format of these meetings is simple: Meet on the same day and at the same time every week. Allot 90 minutes. Always start and end on time. As Vince Lombardi once said: “Early is on time; on-time is late.”
During the meeting, everyone provides a quick report on his/her numbers (i.e., whether “on track” or “off track”). Next, you review “to-dos” from the previous week. Finally, you spend at least 60 of the 90 minutes solving problems, using a process called “IDS.”
IDS stands for Identify-Discuss-Solve. It’s a powerful process for getting to the root cause of an issue and then solving it, forever! It takes a little practice, but after a few months, your management team will work through problems with relative ease.
Here’s a snapshot of the L10 Meeting agenda:
In future blogs, I will delve a little deeper into the key components of the L10 Meeting, such as IDS, the Issues List and Quarterly Rocks.
For now, just know that it’s possible to turn those boring, unfruitful status meetings (you know, the ones in which your managers really just watch the clock and worry about all the “real work” they should be doing) into productive meetings that are integral to your company’s success.
What’s not to love about solving problems, minimizing surprises and staying on track forever? You may not think it’s possible, but chances are, you’ve never experienced a Level 10 meeting either!
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Do you think that L-10 meetings are effective more for the leadership team or every department and employee throughout the company? Thanks