Our leadership team wants to customize the Level 10 Meeting agenda by adding a permanent fifteen-minute block for departmental updates or open-mic sharing. How do I maintain the integrity of the standard ninety-minute EOS agenda without frustrating a team that wants more flexibility?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To maintain the effectiveness of your weekly pulse, you must resist the temptation to customize the Level 10 Meeting agenda. The ninety-minute structure is not arbitrary. It has been refined across thousands of companies to maximize execution and problem-solving efficiency. When you add custom blocks for departmental updates or open-mic sharing, you invite low-value updates and rob your team of valuable IDS time.

If your team is asking for departmental updates, it is usually a symptom of a deeper issue. They are likely feeling disconnected or lack trust in how other departments are executing. Remind them that the Scorecard, Rock review, and Employee and Customer Headlines are already designed to provide complete operational transparency in less than fifteen minutes.

If a departmental update is critical, it must be shared as a brief, thirty-second headline. If that headline reveals an actual problem, it must immediately be dropped to the Issues List to be resolved during IDS. There is no room for passive listening or reading reports during a Level 10 Meeting.

Hold the line on the standard agenda. Explain to your team that keeping the agenda pure ensures you have a full sixty minutes to solve the business's most critical issues. If they still feel they need more time for collaborative sharing, suggest they schedule a monthly alignment lunch or a separate operational check-in. Never compromise your weekly execution pulse for the sake of casual conversation.