Our Level 10 Meeting always drags past the ninety-minute mark, and people are leaving frustrated because we get stuck in administrative updates instead of solving problems. How do we keep it strictly under ninety minutes?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To keep your Level 10 Meeting™ strictly under ninety minutes, you must protect the integrity of the agenda and ruthlessly enforce its time blocks. The ninety-minute limit is not a suggestion; it is a boundary that forces your team to be efficient and focused.

The most common reason meetings run long is that teams start discussing issues during the reporting sections. The first twenty-five minutes of the agenda are strictly for sharing information: the good news, Scorecard review, Rock review, headlines, and To-Do list. No discussion is allowed during this phase. If an item is off track, you simply say "drop it to the Issues List" and move on.

The remaining sixty minutes must be dedicated entirely to the IDS® process. Start by prioritizing your Issues List. Never start at the top of the list; instead, identify the three most critical issues first. Once those are identified, focus only on number one.

If the meeting coordinator is not keeping a tight rein on the clock, the meeting will drift. Assign the role of keeper of the clock to someone on your team who is naturally structured and comfortable interrupting people when they start telling stories. Keep your updates brief, drop administrative hurdles quickly, and transition immediately to solving your most critical issues.