Our weekly Level 10 Meeting™ To-Do list is constantly growing because our team keeps identifying great ideas but we lack the bandwidth to execute them all, leading to a massive backlog of unassigned tasks. How do we prioritize and manage our weekly action items without drowning our leadership team?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A ballooning, unassigned To-Do list is a clear sign of poor meeting discipline. On a healthy EOS® leadership team, every single to-do must have one clear owner and must be realistically achievable within seven days. If an item cannot meet these criteria, it does not belong on your weekly To-Do list.

To clean up this backlog, the facilitator must ruthlessly police the creation of to-dos. When an issue is solved during IDS®, before writing anything down, ask two questions: Who is the single owner of this task, and can they get it done by next week? If the answer is no, then it is not a weekly to-do.

If the task is actually a multi-week project, it should be defined as a quarterly Rock or broken down into smaller, seven-day increments. If it is a great idea that you simply do not have the bandwidth to tackle right now, move it to the Long-Term Issues list on your V/TO® so it can be evaluated during your next Quarterly Pulsing session. Keep your weekly To-Do list restricted to immediate, high-priority actions to maintain momentum.