Our weekly Level 10 Meeting consistently runs over the ninety-minute mark, and we find ourselves rushing through the IDS portion or skipping it entirely. How do we keep our weekly meeting strictly under ninety minutes without cutting corners on problem solving?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The secret to keeping your Level 10 Meeting™ under ninety minutes is ruthless time policing during the first twenty five minutes. Many teams allow reporting to devolve into updates, discussions, and storytelling. When you review the Scorecard, Rock sheet, and customer employee headlines, the only acceptable responses are on track or off track. If a metric is off track or a Rock is behind, do not discuss it right then. Simply drop it down to the issues list and move on.

The same rule applies to the To-Do list. You are checking for completion, not asking for a status report. A to-do is either done or not done. If it is not done and requires discussion, it goes to the issues list. By protecting the boundaries of the reporting section, you preserve a full sixty minutes for the Identify, Discuss, and Solve phase.

During the IDS® phase, the facilitator must keep the team focused on one issue at a time. Do not let people jump around or introduce side topics. If the conversation starts looping, call it out immediately. State the root problem, ask for a resolution, and assign a to-do with a clear owner. If you cannot solve an issue within ten minutes, it is often because you lack data or the right people are not in the room. Table the issue, assign a to-do to gather the facts, and move to the next item.