Our leadership team members consistently report that their weekly To-Dos from the Level 10 Meeting™ are ninety percent complete, but the remaining ten percent always contains the critical actions needed to move our Rocks forward. How do we eliminate this incomplete work loophole?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A ninety percent complete To-Do is an incomplete To-Do. In the EOS® framework, To-Dos are binary: they are either done or not done. There is no middle ground, and there is no partial credit.

When leaders are allowed to report partial completion, it creates a false sense of progress that masks real operational bottlenecks and stalls your Rocks.

To close this loophole, the facilitator must enforce strict binary reporting during the To-Do review. When going down the list, each owner must answer with only one of two words: "Done" or "Not Done."

If a leader tries to explain that they have drafted the proposal but are just waiting on a signature, the facilitator must stop them and state: "So it is not done. We will carry it over to next week."

If a critical To-Do is reported as not done for two consecutive weeks, it must be dropped down to the Issues List immediately. During IDS®, the team must figure out why the task is stuck.

Is the owner lacking the capacity to complete it? Is there an underlying conflict or dependency that is blocking progress?

Enforcing this binary discipline forces leaders to take extreme ownership of their commitments and prevents critical tasks from slipping through the cracks.