When an IDS solution produces an action item that legitimately requires two to three weeks of technical work, how should we capture it without dragging down our weekly To-Do completion percentage?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If an action item takes two to three weeks, it is not a To-Do. By definition in EOS®, a To-Do is a specific commitment that can and must be completed in seven days. Allowing multi-week tasks onto your To-Do List guarantees a sub-ninety percent completion rate, obscures operational bottlenecks, and turns your Level 10 Meeting™ into an exercise in excuse documentation.

When an agreed solution requires several weeks of effort, the leadership team must use one of two mechanisms during IDS®.

First, break the larger initiative down into its immediate seven-day milestone. If the task is rebuilding the onboarding workflow over three weeks, the To-Do for next week cannot be rebuild onboarding workflow. The To-Do must be draft outline of onboarding steps and send to team by Thursday. The following week, the subsequent action item might be test new software integration with payroll. Each week gets a distinct, binary, seven-day deliverable.

Second, if the initiative is too substantial to chop into weekly operational tasks and requires significant leadership bandwidth, it is not an action item at all. It is a candidate for a quarterly Rock or an ongoing departmental project.

Never allow an owner to accept a To-Do with the caveat that it will take a couple of weeks. When the Integrator hears that disclaimer, stop the scribe from typing and force the issue owner to define what concrete, verifiable slice of that project will be completed before the next pulse.