We just completed Focus Day and our leadership team is struggling with our weekly Level 10 Meeting. We find ourselves spending all our time on status updates and we have almost no time left for IDS. How do we shift our habits in these first ninety days to focus on solving problems?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is the most common trap in the first ninety days of running on EOS. Your leadership team is addicted to updates because talking about what you did feels like work, whereas solving hard problems is uncomfortable.

To fix this, you must enforce the strict time limits of the Level 10 Meeting. The first twenty-five minutes are for reporting only. This includes the Segue, Scorecard, Rock review, Customer/Employee Headlines, and the To-Do List.

During this reporting section, there is absolutely no discussion allowed. If a number is off track or a Rock is behind, you do not start solving it. You simply say 'not on track' and drop that item to the IDS portion of the agenda. If someone starts explaining why a metric is low, the meeting leader must cut them off immediately and say, 'Let us drop that to IDS.'

This discipline preserves a full sixty minutes for actual problem-solving. When you get to the IDS portion, you must prioritize the list. Do not start at the top; pick the top three most critical issues facing the business today.

Once you isolate the root cause, discuss it briefly, and assign a clear, actionable To-Do for the coming week, you will see your issues list shrink. Real traction in the first ninety days comes from learning to state a problem in one sentence, agree on the root cause, and assign a weekly action item to resolve it.