Our Level 10 Meeting™ is scheduled to start at nine sharp, but people routinely stroll in at nine-o-five or nine-ten, forcing us to compress our reporting or rush through IDS®. How do we enforce a strict on-time start without creating a corporate, clock-punching culture?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If your Level 10 Meeting™ starts late, you are bleeding money and signaling that respect for your team members' time is optional. A late start is a symptom of weak operational discipline.

To fix this, you must establish a hard rule: the meeting starts on time, even if seats are empty. If it is nine o'clock and only two people are in the room, the facilitator must start the segue immediately. Do not wait for stragglers.

When late arrivals walk in, do not stop the meeting to catch them up. They must simply jump into the current flow. This natural awkwardness is often enough to correct the behavior.

Additionally, the rating segment at the end of the meeting is your best tool for peer accountability. If a meeting started late because of tardiness, the rating cannot be a ten.

The facilitator or any team member should rate the meeting a seven or eight and explicitly state that the late start was the reason. When people realize their lateness is dragging down the team's weekly score, peer pressure will do the work for you.

Make it a cultural norm that same day, same time, starts on time, and ends on time is non-negotiable. If a leader has a recurring conflict that makes them late, move the meeting to a time when everyone can commit to being in their seat and ready to go at the top of the hour.