Our leadership team's weekly To-Do completion rate has been hovering between seventy and eighty percent for the last two months. We are all busy, but we are falling behind on our commitments. How do we get the entire team back above the ninety percent standard?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When your team-wide To-Do completion rate drops below ninety percent week after week, you have a cultural expectation problem. You have allowed ninety percent to become a loose suggestion rather than a non-negotiable standard of accountability.

To fix this, you must first look at how To-Dos are being assigned. Often, teams create too many low-priority To-Dos during IDS® that are not actually necessary to solve the issue. Before writing down a To-Do, the facilitator must ask if the action is truly required to move the needle this week.

Second, look at the scope of the tasks. A Level 10 Meeting™ To-Do is a seven-day commitment. If a task takes longer than a week, it is not a To-Do; it is a project or a Rock. Break larger tasks down into weekly bite-sized pieces that can realistically be finished in seven days.

Third, change how you run the To-Do review. Instead of casually reading through the list, the facilitator must read each item and expect a simple, binary 'done' or 'not done' response.

If a To-Do is not done, do not accept excuses. Immediately drop the unfinished task down to the Issues List to be discussed during IDS®. If a leader consistently fails to complete their To-Dos, it is an issue that must be solved. By treating incomplete tasks as operational failures, you will quickly restore the discipline needed to hit your ninety percent target.