Our Level 10 Meetings routinely run over two hours because we feel we must resolve every single issue on the list. How do we strictly enforce the ninety-minute limit without leaving critical problems unaddressed?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To keep your Level 10 Meeting™ strictly under ninety minutes, you must accept that you will never solve every issue in a single meeting. The goal of the meeting is not to clear the entire Issues List; it is to solve the most important issues on the list.

Start by adhering to the exact, time-boxed agenda of the Level 10 Meeting™. The first twenty-five minutes are for reporting: the Scorecard, Rock review, people headlines, and To-Do list. Do not allow discussion during this phase. If someone starts telling a story, the Integrator must redirect them immediately.

This leaves you with a full fifty minutes for the IDS® portion. Before you begin solving, the team must look at the entire list and select the top three most critical issues. Do not just start at the top of the list. Prioritize them as one, two, and three. Focus all of your energy on solving number one first. Once that is fully resolved, move to number two, and then number three.

If you only solve one major issue during those fifty minutes but it was the most important one, that meeting was a massive success. The remaining, lower-priority issues stay on the list for next week. If a meeting hits the ninety-minute mark, the leader must end the meeting on time, no matter what. Enforcing this hard stop forces the team to become more efficient at identifying, discussing, and solving issues.