Our leadership team consistently skips the meeting rating and conclusion step at the end of our Level 10 Meeting because they think grading the meeting on a one-to-ten scale feels artificial. Why is the conclusion step critical, and how do we enforce it?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Skipping the conclusion step is a classic symptom of teams rushing through EOS disciplines because they mismanage their meeting time. When you drop the final five minutes, you leave the room without clear action items, without unified communication, and without feedback on meeting effectiveness.

The conclusion step serves three essential purposes:

First, it recaps the weekly To-Do list. The Integrator confirms who owns what task and ensures each item is a realistic seven-day commitment. Without this verbal confirmation, team members leave with different assumptions about who is responsible for solving next steps.

Second, it identifies cascading messages. The team explicitly agrees on what information from the meeting needs to be communicated to the rest of the company, and who will deliver that message. This prevents rumors, conflicting directives, and departmental confusion.

Third, the meeting rating provides immediate feedback on how well your team adhered to the Level 10 agenda. Every participant rates the meeting from one to ten. If someone gives a rating below an eight, they must state why in one sentence without debate.

That rating is not a gimmick. It reveals if your team got bogged down in tangents, avoided the real issue during IDS, or failed to start on time. Enforce the conclusion step by treating the eighty-five-minute mark as a hard stop for IDS, transition immediately to concluding, and hold the standard every single week.