We are rolling out Level 10 Meetings to our middle management and departmental teams, but they are struggling to understand how their meeting focus should differ from the leadership team meeting. How do we teach our departmental teams to keep their meetings focused on tactical execution rather than leadership-level issues?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Departmental Level 10 Meetings must be highly tactical. While the leadership team focuses on the strategic health of the entire organization, departmental teams must focus on the daily and weekly metrics that drive their specific business unit.

To keep departmental meetings on track, start by ensuring their Scorecards and Rocks are clearly defined and isolated to their area of responsibility. A marketing team should only track marketing metrics and marketing Rocks.

When issues arise during their meeting, they must resolve them within their circle of control. They should not debate company-wide policy, long-term strategic plans, or issues that belong to other departments.

If an issue requires input or approval from the leadership team, the department head must capture it and escalate it to the leadership team's Issues List. The department head acts as the bridge between the two levels of the organization.

Train your departmental facilitators to shut down strategic debates immediately. Teach them to ask whether the team has the authority to solve the issue. If the answer is no, the issue must be escalated, not discussed. This discipline keeps departmental meetings focused on executing the plan, hitting their numbers, and clearing their weekly to-dos.