By Jerry Kauffman, EOS Partner

I’ve been a business person for over 30 years, much of it in executive leadership, so I’ve spent a lot of time in meetings.  Some of that time was very productive, some was as painful as a root canal without Novocain.  You won’t find many people who say they love meetings, but when it comes down to it, it’s more that they don’t hate all meeting, they just hate bad meetings. 

What Makes a Great Team Meeting?

In EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), one of the tools leadership teams find yields the fastest benefit is the Level 10 Meeting™.  What makes it great? First, it’s on a Pulse (same day, same time, starts on time, ends on time, specific agenda).  Second, it’s a crisp, focused look at the most important numbers in the business, has accountability baked right in, and most of the meeting time is spent solving the issues that are most important to the business and moving forward. 

No churning, having the same conversation week after week (or should that be weak?), or being forced to listen to one person drone (or blare) on and on without being any further ahead at the end of the meeting than when you walked into the room. 

The Level 10 Agenda

• Segue (5 min) – quick personal/professional good news to connect as people and make a tangible segue from “IN” the business to “ON” the business
• Report only on most important numbers for the business – Just say Yes or No, no explanations or excuses.  If discussion is needed, drop it down to Issues.
  • Scorecard (5 min) – key numbers with weekly goals – Are you hitting them?  Yes/No
  • Rocks – (5 min) key priorities for this quarter – Are you on/off track? Yes/No
  • Customer / Employee Headlines (5 min) – big news (good or bad) on the people fronts, both inside and outside the organization.
• To Do List (5 min)– All the things the people said last week would be done by this week – Are they done?  Yes/No. Note: A great team hits 90% Done each week.
• Issues – IDS – Identify, Discuss, Solve (60 min) – Start with MOST IMPORTANT, IDS as many Issues as you have time for.
  • Identify – Dig and dig to get past the symptom to the true ROOT Issue.
  • Discuss – Everybody gets to say what they want to say, but NO tangents or rabbit trails and NO repeating (that’s called politicking).  
  • Solve – Identify specific actions to be done, who will do them, and when they’ll be done.
• Conclude (5 min)
  • Recap To Dos – crystal clear who agreed to do what by when.
  • Cascading messages – important decisions made that need to be communicated well.
  • Rate the meeting 1-10 – helps you to self-correct and make sure these meetings are compelling (rated 8-10), and highly valuable to the team.

For a senior Leadership Team, a weekly Pulse for 90 minutes is recommended to start.  You might adjust to suit your specific situation, but the key is to maintain a very high level of discipline on all five parts of the Pulse and have a great facilitator. 

More on Level 10 meetings (hint: search for Level 10).