Our mid-level managers are secretly canceling their departmental Level 10 Meetings™ whenever they get busy, claiming they 'talk all day anyway' and do not need a formal ninety minutes. How do we enforce the weekly meeting pulse at the departmental level without micromanaging them?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When managers cancel their Level 10 Meetings™ because they are busy, they are sacrificing long-term alignment for short-term firefighting. Saying they talk all day is a trap. Informal chatter is not structured problem solving, and it actually breeds more operational chaos and waste.

To enforce the weekly meeting pulse, you must hold your managers accountable through the Accountability Chart. Running a weekly Level 10 Meeting™ is a core responsibility of every leader and manager seat in an EOS® company. It is not an optional activity.

First, ensure that every department has a fixed day and time for their meeting that never changes. Next, the leadership team must monitor departmental performance through weekly Scorecards and Rock reviews. If a department is missing its metrics or falling behind on its Rocks, look directly at their meeting pulse.

Ask the manager to share their meeting ratings and To-Do completion rates during your regular check-ins. If they are skipping meetings, make it clear that the weekly pulse is the tool that saves them time, not a burden that takes it away. When they run a structured meeting, they eliminate the endless, disruptive ad-hoc interruptions that happen throughout the rest of the week.