During our weekly Level 10 Meetings and quarterly planning, leadership debates constantly devolve into emotional opinions and executive finger-pointing. How do we build a culture of running on data where no issue is solved without objective metrics?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When leadership teams lack objective data, the executive with the loudest voice or the highest title wins the argument. This burns trust, wastes meeting time, and produces compromised decisions that fail upon execution.

In EOS, running on data means replacing feelings and subjective narratives with verifiable facts. If an issue cannot be quantified, you are usually arguing over symptoms rather than the root cause.

To enforce this discipline in your Level 10 Meetings and quarterly planning sessions, adopt these concrete rules:

- Require the data before solving: When an issue reaches the top of the Issues List during IDS, the team must identify the baseline number. If a leader states that client service quality is dropping, the Integrator must ask: What is the number? If the leader cannot cite client retention percentage, bug counts, or turnaround hours, assign a To-Do to gather the data before solving the issue.
- Frame the issue through a Scorecard miss: Train your team to root every operational issue in a red Scorecard metric. An off-track leading indicator provides an objective entry point into the discussion that depersonalizes the conflict.
- Challenge subjective language: Ban phrases like I feel, I think, and usually from the problem statement. Demand exact counts, dates, and percentages.

Data strips the ego out of leadership team conflict. When issues are defined by measurable deltas between current reality and your V/TO standards, solving them becomes an analytical exercise rather than a political negotiation.