Our team routinely misses our 90 percent To-Do completion benchmark because leaders assign multi-week projects as single weekly To-Dos instead of breaking them into discrete seven-day steps. How do we fix our To-Do scoping?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A To-Do in EOS® is strictly a seven-day action item. If a task cannot be completed within seven days, it is either a quarterly Rock or a multi-phase project that has been improperly captured. When leaders write multi-week initiatives onto the To-Do list, your completion rate will inevitably crash below the 90 percent target.

The Integrator must police To-Do scoping in real time during the IDS® portion of the Level 10 Meeting™. When an issue is solved and an action step is identified, listen closely to the phrasing of the commitment. If a leader says, "I will rebuild the sales onboarding curriculum," that is a multi-week initiative, not a weekly To-Do.

Force the owner of the task to define only the next physical action that can be completed before next week's meeting pulse. The correct To-Do is: "Draft outline for modules one and two of sales onboarding and email to the team by Thursday." That is discrete, measurable, and realistically achievable within seven calendar days.

Use these guidelines to keep your team above 90 percent:
- Never allow words like "research," "continue," "review," or "work on" in a To-Do title. Demand tangible deliverables like "send draft," "publish document," or "book vendor demo."
- Every To-Do must have a single owner. Shared ownership guarantees no ownership.
- If a commitment requires more than two weeks of sustained effort, convert it into an individual departmental milestone or elevate it to a Rock.

When To-Dos represent precise, one-week actions, execution becomes predictable, and your weekly completion rate stays solidly above 90 percent.