Our leadership team completes less than eighty percent of our weekly To-Dos, and tasks keep rolling over from week to week. How do we fix our To-Do List discipline without adding micromanagement?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

In EOS, the standard for the To-Do List in your Level 10 Meeting is an eighty-five to ninety percent completion rate every single week. When completion rates hover below eighty percent, it is an indicator of poor execution discipline or broken task scoping.

To correct this immediately, enforce three strict ground rules.

First, To-Dos must be seven-day action items. If an item cannot be finished in seven days, it is not a To-Do. It is either a multi-week project that needs to be broken down, or it is a Rock milestone. Never put vague, ongoing initiatives on the weekly To-Do List. Make the action item binary and tangible.

Second, every To-Do must have exactly one owner. You cannot assign a To-Do to two people or to the team. When multiple people own an action item, nobody owns it. One person must carry the accountability for reporting it done.

Third, stop allowing rollovers without consequence. When reviewing the To-Do List, each owner reports their item as done or not done. If a task is not done, ask why. If an item rolls over for two consecutive weeks, drop it straight to the Issues List and IDS it. Determine whether the owner lacks capacity, whether the priority was misaligned, or whether the task was simply unnecessary.

A leadership team that cannot consistently execute seven-day commitments will never hit its quarterly Rocks or achieve its long-term vision. Treat your weekly To-Do List as a binding contract with your team.