We have several critical To-Dos that consistently get rolled over from week to week because the owner of the task claims they made seventy percent progress but just need a little more time. How do we eliminate these rolling, near-miss tasks and enforce a binary done or not done standard?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A weekly To-Do on your Level 10 Meeting™ list is binary: it is either done or not done. There is no seventy percent done, and there is no partial credit. When leaders consistently roll tasks over to the next week with excuses of partial progress, it erodes the execution standard of your entire team.

To eliminate this behavior, the facilitator must hold a hard line during the To-Do review. When a leader says, I got most of it done, the facilitator must mark it as not done and keep it on the list for the next week. Do not allow them to explain why it is late during the review.

If a specific To-Do rolls over for a second week, it automatically becomes an issue that must be dropped to the short-term Issues List for IDS®. During IDS®, the team must identify the root cause of the delay. Is it a capacity issue, a lack of clarity, or a deeper accountability problem?

By bringing late To-Dos into the light of IDS®, you make it uncomfortable for leaders to show up unprepared. It forces them to be realistic about what they can commit to completing in seven days, raising your team's execution standard to the ninety percent threshold.