EOS Worldwide Blog | Tips & Advice for Entrepreneurs and Leaders of Growing Companies

3 Steps to Improve Your Level 10 Meeting™

Written by Sue Hawkes | September 24, 2018

Have you struggled to find 90 minutes for your leadership team to meet every week? Do you continue to shoplift time and hijack people throughout the week when there are issues in your business? If so, it’s time to give your Level 10 Meeting a tune up.

Our most successful clients tell us they can’t imagine their business without their Level 10 Meetings. In fact, they don’t know how they ran their meetings prior to having Level 10 Meetings™!

To improve the quality of your weekly meetings, take these three steps.

Be Prepared

Prepare for your Level 10 Meeting in the same way you prepare for your most important prospect or client. With all you do in a day, preparing for the Level 10 Meeting can fall to the wayside or seem like a low priority, but it’s not. Your company deserves the time and attention every week.

  • Review your tools including your Scorecard, Rock Sheet, To Do List and Issues List. Determine your top three issues to solve and drop down any numbers or rocks that are off track.
  • Review your past week’s calendar. It may also trigger issues you want to discuss.
  • Use the Level 10 Meeting agenda within 3 - 12 hours prior to your meeting to focus on what’s most important for you to solve this week.
  • Think through what you want from the meeting and be focused and clear about getting what you want.
  • Ensure your numbers are accurate, your rocks are on track, your to-dos are complete, and bring any relevant information to address issues on the list.

When everyone prepares, your meeting will run more efficiently, leaving more time for solving issues.

Be Energized

Your leadership Level 10 Meeting is the most expensive meeting you have. Think about it. You have the most senior minds at the table, ready to solve issues and work on the business for 90 minutes. This is worth your energy! Show up like it matters to you, and if things are off track or not working, be brave enough to enter the danger and have the tough conversations.

Be passionate about solving issues, especially if you disagree with another leadership team member. Your Level 10 Meetings are only as good as your attitude, so come to the table committed to the greater good. Preparation and energy are linked. If you’ve prepared well, you’ll be excited and ready to tackle issues. If you haven’t prepared, you will wait for others to run the meeting. It’s YOUR meeting. Act like you own it.

Identify the Root Cause

Failure to identify the root cause of an issue leads to inefficiencies. Not only are you wasting time solving a superficial issue, but when the root cause isn’t attacked, you will actually create more issues.

Learning to identify the root cause of an issue (IDS™) takes patience and practice, but it’s worth it.

  • You must stay in the Identification phase until you can clearly state your issue in one sentence. If you can’t, you’re not there.
  • The Discussion phase is the quickest of the steps once you’re at the root, since everyone will weigh in with their perspective once – more than that is politicking.
  • Solving is all about action items and To Dos which need to be captured and assigned ownership. If you don’t capture and assign accountability, the issue will return. Keeping issues concise forces people to continue to dig to the root cause, which leads to solving the issue once and for all.

Level 10 Meetings are a key piece of keeping your team aligned, being efficient, and learning to put issues on the list during your week instead of interrupting one another when it’s not time-sensitive. When you do this well, you’ll get time back in your week to focus on what you do best.

Next Steps

If your meetings feel stuck and you aren’t experiencing a '10' at your Level 10 Meetings, begin with the practices above. Preparation, engaged energy, and clearly identifying the root cause will get you out of your rut and back to work.
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