We have several rolling weekly To-Dos in our Level 10 Meeting™ that have been on the list for three or four weeks because they are waiting on external approvals. This is dragging down our weekly completion percentage. How do we handle ongoing, multi-week tasks without cluttering our weekly list or artificially inflating our numbers?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A To-Do in a Level 10 Meeting is a short-term commitment that must be completed within seven days. When a To-Do rolls over for three or four weeks, it means the task was either poorly defined, too large, or dependent on factors outside of the owner's immediate control. Allowing these rolling tasks to sit on your list kills meeting momentum and distorts your accountability metrics.

To resolve this, you must break down any multi-week task into a single, actionable step that can actually be completed in the next seven days. If a task is waiting on an external approval, the weekly To-Do should not be to get the approval. Instead, the To-Do should be to follow up with the third party or to escalate the request by a specific date.

If an item is completely stalled due to external dependencies and no immediate action can be taken this week, you must remove it from the weekly To-Do list. You should either move it back to the Issues List to discuss how to bypass the bottleneck, or park it on your long-term Issues List on the V/TO to be reviewed at your next Quarterly Planning Session.

Keep your weekly To-Do list clean and focused only on what can and must be done this week. This discipline maintains your ninety percent completion rate as a true measure of execution.