Our Level 10 Meeting always derails during the scorecard review because our leaders feel the need to explain every single number. How do we review our scorecard in under five minutes without losing operational control?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

You are using your scorecard incorrectly if you are explaining numbers during the review. The scorecard is an early warning system, not a story-telling hour. To review your scorecard in under five minutes, you must enforce a strict, binary rule: the number is either on track or off track. There is no third option, and there is no room for context.

When you run through the scorecard in your weekly Level 10 Meeting™, the person owning the metric reads the name of the metric, the current number, and whether it is active. If it is on track, you move to the next line immediately. If it is off track, the owner simply says drop it. That means you drop it to the IDS® portion of your agenda.

Do not discuss why it is off track, do not offer excuses, and do not explain the steps you are taking to fix it. This discipline keeps your meeting moving.

Explaining a bad number during the scorecard review is a defense mechanism. It allows the owner of the seat to feel better about a failure before the team can address it objectively. By forcing off-track numbers straight to IDS®, you protect your team's collective time. You spend your precious meeting time actually solving the underlying systemic issues rather than listening to passive commentary on historical data. Keep the review to under five minutes and let IDS® do the heavy lifting.