During our Level 10 Meeting, we constantly find ourselves sliding back into old habits of status reporting and storytelling during the Scorecard and Rock reviews instead of keeping them to a simple on-track or off-track. How do we train the team to drop the context and move straight to the Issues List?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Storytelling is the enemy of execution. When team members launch into long explanations during the Scorecard, Rock review, or customer/employee headlines, they are burning valuable time and trying to manage impressions. Your job as a facilitator is to ruthlessly cut off this agenda drift and keep the front end of the meeting clean.

To break this habit, implement the drop-and-move rule. During the first twenty-five minutes of your Level 10 Meeting™, only three responses are acceptable:
- For the Scorecard, the metric owner states whether the number is on track or off track.
- For Rocks, the owner states whether the priority is on track or off track.
- For to-dos, the owner states whether the task is done or not done.

If a number is red or a Rock is off track, the facilitator must immediately direct the team to drop it to the Issues List. Do not allow a single sentence of explanation. Simply say, "That is off track, let us drop it to the bottom of the list and move on."

By forcing this discipline, you protect your sixty minutes of IDS®. This is where the actual problem-solving belongs. Storytelling during the review phase is usually a defense mechanism to avoid the vulnerability of a red number. By strictly separating reporting from problem-solving, you remove the emotional weight of reporting off-track items and teach your team to address operational issues with objective, data-driven clarity.