Whenever our company experiences an operational crisis or a busy season, our leadership team's first instinct is to cancel our weekly Level 10 Meeting™ so everyone can go fight the fire. How do we maintain our weekly meeting pulse when the team insists they do not have ninety minutes to spare?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Canceling your Level 10 Meeting™ during a crisis is like throwing your steering wheel out the window because you are driving too fast. It is a massive mistake. When things are chaotic, that is precisely when you need the alignment, prioritization, and problem-solving power of your meeting pulse the most. If you cancel the meeting, your leaders will spend those ninety minutes working in silos, sending hundreds of frantic emails, making misaligned decisions, and creating more chaos. To break this habit, you must treat the same day, same time, same agenda rule as non-negotiable. If the building is physically on fire, evacuate. Otherwise, the meeting happens. When the team is overwhelmed, the facilitator should remind them that the Level 10 Meeting™ is the fastest way to coordinate their crisis response. Use the IDS® section to put the actual crisis at the very top of the list. Instead of working on minor issues, dedicate the entire sixty minutes of IDS® to solving the root causes of the current emergency. Assign clear, immediate to-dos to coordinate the response. This ensures that everyone leaves the room aligned, with a single version of the truth and a clear action plan. You will actually save hours of duplicated effort and chaotic communication by keeping your ninety-minute discipline. True leaders do not abandon their systems when the pressure rises, they lean into them.