We want to prepare our company for a clean exit, but our middle managers are still dependent on us. How do we use departmental Level 10 Meetings to build their leadership capacity so we can step out of daily operations?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To prepare your company for an exit, you must build a self sustaining leadership team. If you are still solving every problem, your company is not sellable. The best way to train your middle managers is to roll out departmental Level 10 Meetings™ and let them run them without you.

The Level 10 Meeting™ structure acts as training wheels for management. It forces middle managers to look at a Scorecard, track their own Rocks, and solve their own operational issues using IDS®. This prevents them from running to you every time something goes wrong.

As the owner, you must stop attending their meetings. Your job is to audit their weekly meeting ratings and review their To-Do completion rates. If they are consistently rating their meetings an eight or higher and hitting ninety percent of their To-Dos, they are building traction.

By letting them run their own Level 10 Meetings™, you force them to take ownership. They learn how to facilitate, how to hold each other accountable, and how to solve problems. This is how you transition from running the business to sitting in the Owner Box, making the company highly attractive to prospective buyers.