Effective leadership meetings are not defined by how long people talk, but by how consistently the team identifies real issues, solves them, and leaves with clear accountability. The Level 10 Meeting, a core meeting format used in the Entrepreneurial Operating System, is designed to create that discipline. It gives leadership teams a repeatable structure for reviewing performance, surfacing obstacles, making decisions, and improving execution every week.
TLDR: A Level 10 Meeting is a 90-minute weekly leadership meeting built around a strict EOS agenda: check in, review numbers, review priorities, discuss issues, and assign actions. For example, a 12-person operations company that adopted the format reduced unresolved leadership issues by 38% over one quarter by moving from informal updates to structured IDS discussion. The meeting works best when the team protects the agenda, focuses on the highest-priority issues, and ends with clear to-dos. The goal is simple: make meetings consistently valuable enough to score a “10.”
What Is a Level 10 Meeting?
A Level 10 Meeting is a weekly leadership meeting that follows a fixed agenda and is typically scheduled for 90 minutes. The name comes from the question asked at the end of every meeting: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how effective was this meeting?” The objective is not perfection, but a consistent standard of usefulness, focus, and accountability.
Unlike a traditional status meeting, a Level 10 Meeting is not meant to be a roundtable of updates. It is a disciplined operating rhythm. The format helps teams quickly review the health of the business, confirm progress against priorities, and spend the majority of the meeting solving the most important issues.
Standard Level 10 Meeting Agenda
A typical EOS Level 10 Meeting follows the same structure every week. Keeping the sequence consistent reduces confusion and prevents the meeting from drifting into low-value conversation.
- 1. Segue: 5 minutes
Each participant shares good news, personal or professional. This creates a focused and human opening without turning into extended conversation. - 2. Scorecard Review: 5 minutes
The team reviews weekly metrics and identifies anything off track. The purpose is not to explain every number, but to flag exceptions and add issues to the Issues List if needed. - 3. Rock Review: 5 minutes
Quarterly priorities, known as Rocks, are reviewed as on track or off track. Off-track Rocks should not be debated immediately; they should be captured as issues. - 4. Customer and Employee Headlines: 5 minutes
The team shares important news about customers, employees, vendors, or other stakeholders. Items requiring deeper discussion are moved to the Issues List. - 5. To-Do List Review: 5 minutes
Previous action items are reviewed as done or not done. A strong leadership team should aim for a completion rate of at least 90%. - 6. IDS: 60 minutes
The team identifies, discusses, and solves the highest-priority issues. This is the heart of the meeting and should receive the majority of the time. - 7. Conclude: 5 minutes
The team reviews new to-dos, confirms communication needs, rates the meeting, and closes on time.
The Level 10 Meeting Template
A practical Level 10 Meeting template should be simple enough to use every week and structured enough to enforce discipline. The following format can be used in a spreadsheet, meeting platform, project management tool, or shared document.
- Meeting date: Record the date and start time.
- Attendees: List leadership team members present and absent.
- Scorecard: Include 5 to 15 key weekly numbers, each with an owner and target.
- Rocks: List each quarterly priority, owner, and status.
- Headlines: Capture customer, employee, and company updates.
- To-dos: Track action items, owners, due dates, and completion status.
- Issues List: Maintain a running list of problems, obstacles, decisions, and opportunities.
- IDS notes: Document decisions made and actions assigned.
- Meeting rating: Record each participant’s score and the average.
The best templates are not overloaded. If the document becomes too complex, the team may spend more time managing the template than solving problems. A Level 10 Meeting template should support clarity, not bureaucracy.
Common Discussion Topics for a Level 10 Meeting
The most productive Level 10 Meetings focus on issues that affect execution, profitability, culture, and strategic progress. Common discussion topics include:
- Missed scorecard targets: Revenue shortfalls, margin compression, overdue receivables, low conversion rates, or declining customer satisfaction.
- Off-track Rocks: Quarterly priorities that are behind schedule, under-resourced, or unclear.
- People issues: Role confusion, accountability gaps, performance concerns, hiring delays, or team capacity.
- Customer issues: Service failures, churn risks, major complaints, or changes in customer expectations.
- Process breakdowns: Repeated errors, slow handoffs, unclear procedures, or quality problems.
- Strategic decisions: Pricing, market focus, product direction, resource allocation, or operational tradeoffs.
A useful rule is this: if the issue requires leadership judgment, cross-functional alignment, or a decision that changes priorities, it belongs in the Level 10 Meeting. If it can be handled by one person outside the meeting, it should become a to-do instead.
How IDS Works
IDS stands for Identify, Discuss, Solve. It is the problem-solving method used during the longest portion of the Level 10 agenda.
- Identify: Clarify the real issue. Teams often begin with symptoms, such as “sales are down,” but the real issue may be poor lead quality, slow follow-up, weak positioning, or a pricing mismatch.
- Discuss: Debate the issue honestly and efficiently. Discussion should be direct, factual, and focused on resolution rather than blame.
- Solve: Agree on the next action, decision, or owner. A solved issue usually results in a completed decision, a delegated to-do, or a longer-term project.
The most common mistake in IDS is spending too much time discussing and too little time solving. A facilitator should regularly ask, “What decision do we need to make?” or “What is the next action?”
Best Practices for Running a Level 10 Meeting
To make the meeting effective over time, leadership teams should follow several proven practices.
- Start and end on time. Punctuality reinforces discipline. If the meeting is scheduled for 90 minutes, it should not casually become 110 minutes.
- Keep updates brief. The first 30 minutes are designed to surface issues, not solve them. Avoid detailed explanations until IDS.
- Prioritize the Issues List. Do not start with the easiest topic. Start with the issue that, if solved, would create the greatest value or remove the biggest obstacle.
- Assign one owner to every to-do. Shared accountability often means no accountability. Each action item should have a single person responsible for completion.
- Use facts whenever possible. Scorecard data, customer feedback, financial trends, and operational metrics lead to better decisions than assumptions.
- Record decisions clearly. A decision that is not documented may be revisited repeatedly, wasting time and weakening confidence.
- Rate the meeting honestly. The rating should reflect whether the meeting helped the team move the business forward. Low scores are useful if they lead to improvement.
Mistakes to Avoid
Some teams adopt the Level 10 format but fail to gain the intended benefit because they compromise the discipline. Common mistakes include turning the meeting into departmental reporting, allowing side conversations, skipping the scorecard, tolerating incomplete to-dos, or discussing issues without making decisions.
Another frequent problem is an unfocused Issues List. If every small inconvenience becomes a leadership issue, the meeting loses strategic value. The team should regularly clean the list and remove outdated, duplicate, or low-priority items.
Final Thoughts
A Level 10 Meeting is effective because it combines structure with accountability. It gives leadership teams a predictable forum to review performance, confront reality, and solve the issues that matter most. When run properly, it reduces ambiguity, improves follow-through, and creates a stronger operating rhythm across the organization.
The template itself is not the source of success. The value comes from how consistently the team uses it: reviewing the right numbers, identifying real issues, making clear decisions, and holding one another accountable. Over time, that discipline is what turns a weekly meeting from an obligation into a serious management advantage.