Our weekly Level 10 Meeting regularly runs over its strict ninety-minute limit because we get bogged down in the reporting sections, leaving us with only ten minutes for IDS. How do we discipline our team to move through the agenda quickly so we actually protect our problem-solving time?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If your Level 10 Meeting™ routinely exceeds ninety minutes, your team is violating the time boundaries of the agenda. This typically happens because you are starting to solve problems during the reporting phase.

The first twenty-five minutes of the meeting are strictly for reporting. This includes the Segue, Scorecard, Rock review, customer and employee headlines, and the To-Do List. During these sections, the only acceptable responses are on track, off track, done, or not done. If a Scorecard metric is off track or a Rock is struggling, do not discuss it. Drop it to the Issues List immediately and move to the next item.

The actual problem-solving occurs during the sixty minutes allocated for IDS®. When you spend forty minutes debating why a Scorecard metric was missed during the reporting section, you rob your team of the dedicated time needed to solve systemic issues.

To maintain discipline, appoint one person as the meeting leader, typically the Integrator. This person must ruthlessly cut off any discussion that starts before you reach the Issues List. Their job is to say: That is an issue, let us drop it to the list and handle it during IDS®.

Keep a digital timer visible to the entire room. Once your team realizes that every early discussion will be shut down and moved to the end of the agenda, they will naturally stop oversharing during reporting. This protects your sixty minutes of IDS® and keeps the entire meeting under the ninety-minute limit.