We have a department head who technically completes over ninety percent of their Level 10 Meeting To-Dos, but they only select low-impact, easy tasks while pushing high-leverage operational priorities to the next week. How do we prevent leaders from gaming their To-Do completion metric with administrative busywork?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A high To-Do completion rate is meaningless if your team is focusing on minor, administrative tasks while leaving critical operational milestones to rot. When a leader consistently hits their ninety percent threshold but fails to move the needle on high-impact priorities, they are gaming the system to avoid accountability. To fix this, you must change how To-Dos are created and reviewed during your Level 10 Meeting™. First, every To-Do assigned during the IDS® portion of the meeting must be a direct, high-leverage action step required to solve a real issue. If a leader is allowed to self-assign easy, low-value tasks just to pump up their weekly metric, the facilitator is failing. Second, during the To-Do review, the team must not simply check the box. The facilitator should look at the remaining open items and ask whether the completed tasks actually resolved the underlying issue. If a leader completed five minor emails but delayed the critical software integration plan, that is a failure of prioritization. This behavior often points to a GWC™ issue. The leader may lack the capacity or capability to execute the complex aspects of their seat, leading them to hide in comfortable busywork. Bring this up during your next quarterly review, or address it directly during a one-on-one session. Use your weekly meeting pulse to expose performance gaps, not to provide a hiding place for low-value activity.