Our leadership team is consistently hitting only seventy percent to-do completion, not because of operational crises, but because our weekly action items are written down so vaguely that nobody is quite sure what done looks like when they review them. How do we write sharp, binary to-dos that guarantee accountability in our Level 10 Meeting™?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To fix a chronic failure to hit the ninety percent to-do completion rate, you must look at how these tasks are captured. When a to-do is generated during the IDS® portion of your Level 10 Meeting™, it cannot be a vague, open-ended phrase like "look into marketing agency partners" or "work on the pricing sheet." This lack of clarity is a major source of meeting waste.

To-dos must be written as binary, single-action commitments that can be answered with a simple yes or no. The standard is that another leadership team member should be able to look at the to-do list and immediately know if the task was completed without needing a verbal status report. Instead of "work on the pricing sheet," the to-do should read "email the revised price sheet to three key accounts."

The facilitator must hold the line on this during the last five minutes of the meeting. When wrapping up, read each to-do aloud. If a task sounds soft or ongoing, stop and force the owner to rewrite it. It must be something that can realistically be completed within seven days. If a task is too large, break it down into a smaller, weekly chunk.

When you make your to-dos highly specific and binary, you eliminate the gray area. Team members will no longer show up with excuses about what they thought the task meant. They will either have a yes or a no, driving your completion rate back above the ninety percent threshold.