We are ready to roll out the Level 10 Meeting to our departmental teams, but we are terrified that our middle managers will lack the discipline to run them effectively and they will turn into aimless talk shops. How do we ensure the tool sticks at the departmental level?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Rolling out the Level 10 Meeting™ to departmental teams is critical for scaling your operations, but it often fails because middle managers treat it as a corporate checklist. If they do not understand the value, the meetings will quickly devolve into aimless status updates.

To ensure the tool sticks, do not simply send your managers an email with the agenda. You must train them. Start by inviting department heads to observe the leadership team's Level 10 Meeting™ so they can see what healthy conflict and rapid problem solving actually look like.

Next, have a member of the leadership team, or your Integrator, attend the first few departmental meetings as an observer. Their role is to coach the department manager on maintaining the strict time boundaries of the agenda and pushing the team to drop reporting details to the Issues List.

Emphasize that the meeting is for them, not for the leadership team. It is their weekly opportunity to clear bottlenecks and get support from their peers.

Finally, monitor the health of these meetings by looking at the output. Are they actually solving issues? Are their weekly To-Dos getting done at a ninety percent rate? When department managers experience the relief of actually resolving their daily headaches through IDS®, they will protect the meeting pulse fiercely.