We had a major operational crisis occur right before our scheduled weekly Level 10 Meeting, and half the team wanted to cancel the meeting to fight the fire. How do we maintain our weekly meeting pulse when a real-time emergency threatens to derail our schedule?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The true test of your organizational discipline is how you handle your weekly meeting pulse during a crisis. When an operational fire breaks out, the default reaction of most leadership teams is to cancel the Level 10 Meeting™ and jump into fire-fighting mode. This is a massive mistake that destroys your operational consistency.

Cancel the meeting, and you send a message to the entire company that your weekly discipline is optional when things get tough. Instead, you must run the meeting anyway. The Level 10 Meeting™ is actually the absolute best place to handle a crisis because you already have your entire leadership team in the room.

Instead of canceling, start the meeting exactly on time. Run through your five-minute segue and reporting sections at lightning speed. Then, when you get to IDS®, drop the crisis to the top of the Issues List as your number-one priority. You now have the collective intelligence of your whole team focused on solving the emergency.

Because of the structured IDS® process, you will identify the root cause of the crisis, determine the immediate action steps, assign clear accountability with To-Dos, and solve it far more efficiently than you would have through chaotic, uncoordinated emails and phone calls. Protect the pulse, run the meeting, and use the framework to put out the fire.