Team members frequently drift into our Level 10 Meeting three to five minutes late with coffee or finish an email before dialing in, forcing us to restart the segue. How do we enforce an absolute hard start without creating petty corporate friction?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Treating the start time of your Level 10 Meeting as optional is a symptom of low accountability. When leaders saunter in five minutes late, they send a clear message that their individual calendar matters more than the executive team's collective focus. Restarting the segue or recapping missed reporting for late arrivals rewards poor discipline and degrades the pulse.

A true Level 10 Meeting starts on time, ends on time, and follows the same agenda every single week. Enforcing this does not require petty corporate policies or scolding. It requires the Integrator to lock down meeting mechanics with zero exceptions.

Apply these strict operational rules:
- The meeting starts at the exact designated minute. If the meeting is set for 8:00 AM, the Integrator opens the segue at 8:00:00 AM, even if two chairs are empty.
- Never restart, summarize, or back up the agenda for someone who arrives late. If someone enters at 8:04 AM, they miss the segue entirely and must immediately match the rhythm of the room.
- If a late leader missed their turn on the Scorecard or Rocks review, their items are automatically marked off track and dropped to the bottom of the Issues List.

When a leader experiences the discomfort of walking into a moving train and seeing their functional metrics flagged as off-track without a platform to make excuses, the behavior stops. Punctuality is not about compliance. It is about respecting the rhythm of the business.