Our weekly Level 10 Meeting is supposed to start with a quick segue, but our leadership team members frequently use this time to share long, rambling stories about their personal lives or vent about their weekend, which eats up ten to fifteen minutes before we even touch the Scorecard. How do we tighten the transition and keep the segue under five minutes?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The segue is a physical and mental transition from working in the business to working on the business. Its sole purpose is to get everyone present, aligned, and humanized. When it turns into a twenty minute coffee chat, your meeting discipline is dead before you start.

To fix this, the facilitator must set a strict boundary. Each person gets exactly one personal piece of good news and one professional piece of good news. It should take no more than thirty seconds per person.

If a team member starts telling a long narrative, the facilitator must interrupt them. Do not wait for them to finish. Use a simple phrase like, Keep it to the headline, please.

Remind the team that this is not a social hour. It is a transition. If team members need deeper personal connection, schedule a separate team lunch or social time outside of your weekly pulse.

Another tactic is to go last in, first out. The last person to join the meeting starts the segue, keeping the momentum moving clockwise. If you run a team of seven, the entire segue must be complete in less than four minutes. Do not let the segue bleed. If you tolerate sloppy boundaries in the first five minutes of your Level 10 Meeting, you will tolerate them during the rest of the agenda.