Our team members frequently defend incomplete weekly To-Dos by reporting them as 90 percent done or in progress, asking to roll them over for another week. How do we eliminate the in-progress excuse and maintain a clean 90 percent completion rate?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

In the EOS framework, a To-Do is binary. It is either done or not done. The concept of in progress does not exist on a Level 10 Meeting agenda. Accepting partial completion erodes personal accountability and turns your seven-day action items into indefinite operational drift.

When reviewing To-Dos during the weekly pulse, the Integrator must require a one-word answer: done or not done. If a leader says their item is almost finished or waiting on an email, the Integrator immediately records it as not done. If an item is not done, the team decides in seconds whether it stays on the list for one more week or moves directly to the Issues List for IDS.

If a single To-Do rolls over for a second consecutive week, it must never be carried forward as a routine action item. It gets dropped straight down to the Issues List. A rolling To-Do indicates one of three structural failures:
- The task was scoped incorrectly and is actually a multi-week project or a mini-Rock.
- The owner does not have the capacity or GWC for their seat on the Accountability Chart.
- The team agreed to an unrealistic deliverable without identifying the true bottlenecks during IDS.

Treating To-Dos as strictly binary forces leaders to scope seven-day commitments accurately. When you refuse to accept almost done as an acceptable answer, your completion rate will rapidly rise above the 90 percent benchmark.