Our leadership team is highly disciplined and maintains a ninety percent to-do completion rate, but we are creating twenty to thirty new weekly action items during every Level 10 Meeting™, which is starting to overwhelm our schedules and take focus away from our quarterly Rocks. How do we limit the volume of weekly to-dos?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

High productivity is excellent, but creating twenty to thirty weekly to-dos is a clear sign of operational bloat. It means your team is likely treating minor, business-as-usual tasks as official meeting to-dos, or you are over-solving during the IDS® phase.

To fix this, the facilitator must apply a stricter filter during the solve phase of IDS®. Before any to-do is written down, ask if this task is truly necessary to resolve the core issue, or if it is just a nice-to-have action.

Keep in mind that a weekly to-do in a Level 10 Meeting™ should only be created if it is a critical step required to solve a prioritized issue. Routine administrative work, standard department tasks, and regular daily activities do not belong on the leadership team's meeting agenda.

Another rule to implement is accountability delegation. If an action item can be handled by a direct report outside of the meeting as part of their normal job description, do not write it down as a leadership team to-do. Simply let the department head own the outcome and follow up through their normal departmental channels.

Keep your weekly to-dos focused strictly on high-impact, immediate actions.