Our leadership team is committed to the Level 10 Meeting™ structure, but our collective To-Do completion rate consistently hovers around seventy percent because people are writing down massive, multi-week projects as weekly To-Dos. How do we force our team to scope weekly action items correctly?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A consistent To-Do completion rate below ninety percent is a symptom of poor execution, but it is often caused by a structural misunderstanding of what a weekly To-Do actually is. Many leadership teams treat their To-Do list as a dumping ground for mini-Rocks or complex projects that require weeks of effort. When a To-Do takes twenty hours of work to complete, it will inevitably roll over week after week, dragging down your completion metrics and stalling your momentum.

To resolve this, the facilitator must enforce a strict definition: a weekly To-Do is an action item that can be completely finished in seven days or fewer. If an item requires multiple steps, coordination with external vendors, or deep strategic planning, it is too big for the weekly To-Do list.

During the IDS® portion of your Level 10 Meeting™, before any To-Do is written down, the facilitator must ask the owner of that task if they can realistically complete it by next week. If the answer is no, the task must be broken down into smaller, bite-sized components.

For example, instead of creating a To-Do that says: automated workflow built, the To-Do should read: draft the outline of the automated workflow. This forces your team to focus on the immediate next physical action. By scoping tasks to a seven-day window, you eliminate the excuses, build a culture of immediate accountability, and push your team's weekly completion rate well past the ninety percent benchmark.