Our leadership team is hitting all our scorecard metrics and completing our Rocks, but we are collectively redlining on stress and bordering on burnout. How do we use the Level 10 Meeting™ to surface and address these human capacity risks before they turn into departures?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

High performance on paper can mask deep operational exhaustion. If your team is hitting their targets but destroying their health and morale to do so, your business model is unsustainable and unready for a clean exit.

You must use the Level 10 Meeting™ to make human capacity visible. The best place to surface this is during the Customer/Employee Headlines segment. Encourage your team to share honest headlines about personal capacity and stress levels, not just client wins and staff milestones.

Additionally, consider adding a subjective wellness or capacity metric to your weekly leadership Scorecard. This could be a simple one-to-five rating where each leader rates their current personal capacity and stress level, with one representing complete control and five representing active redline burnout.

When any leader enters a four or five on the Scorecard, it must trigger an immediate issue on the weekly Issues List. During the IDS® portion of the meeting, treat this burnout metric with the exact same operational discipline as a drop in sales revenue.

Identify the root cause of the capacity squeeze. Is it a GWC™ issue with an underperforming direct report? Is there an open seat on the Accountability Chart? Or is the leader failing to delegate? Solve the root cause rather than offering superficial platitudes. Managing your team's energy is a strategic necessity, not a soft HR exercise.