Our team often confuses employee and customer headlines with routine rock updates or completed to-dos. How do we draw a clear line between what is a true headline and other agenda items?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The Employee and Customer Headlines section is designed to be a quick, fifteen-second broadcast of significant human-interest news, not a status report or a repository for operational items. When team members share updates like a completed project or a customer complaint that has already been resolved, they are wasting precious time. To solve this, you must train your team to run every headline through a simple filter before they speak. A true headline must meet three criteria. First, it must be about a specific person, either an employee or a customer. Second, it must require zero discussion or action from the team during the meeting. Third, it is information that the rest of the leadership team needs to know to stay aligned. If an update is about a project, it belongs in the Rock review. If a client is upset and needs a solution, that is an issue that must be dropped straight to the Issues List for IDS, not shared as a headline. If an issue is already resolved, do not bring it up at all; we do not use the Level 10 Meeting to boast about routine fire-fighting. The facilitator must be ruthless here. If a leader starts sharing a status update during headlines, cut them off immediately and instruct them to either move it to the Issues List or save it for the proper section.