Better Business, Better Life – Issue 113

5. Poorly Organised: Meetings that lack a clear agenda or structure can feel chaotic and unproductive.

6. Ineffective Communication: If communication in meetings is one-sided or if attendees don’t feel heard, it can lead to frustration and disengagement.

7. Feeling Disconnected: In virtual or hybrid work environments, meetings can sometimes exacerbate feelings of isolation or disconnection from co-workers.

I remember when I worked at Council (PS: It was the worst 18 months of my life!!) & we added up how much time I spent in meetings – it was around 35 hours per week.

Given that the average work week is supposed to be 37.5 hours, that didn’t leave much time to do actual work & at least another 5 of the issues above existed as well!

So, I fell in love with the EOS Level 10 Meetings when I got introduced to them around 7 years ago.

There are lots of articles & tools that can help you run more effective & enjoyable meetings using the Level 10 methodology – some of them are listed below.

This article is about the 3 most common real-life pitfalls & where, even with the best intentions, Level 10 Meetings don’t quite work as they were intended.

1. Story-Telling

The first 25 minutes are all about checking in & reporting, especially around the scorecard & rocks being on track or off track & identifying all possible issues.

Everything that is off-track is meant to be dropped down to the issues list & then discussed in terms of order of priority.

The challenge is that some people will want to tell you at the reporting stage why they are off track.

They will go into the story of what’s going on. They might even try to solve whatever the issue is by suggesting how it can be fixed.

I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have an opportunity to explain, but what if you spend 15-20 minutes (And I’ve seen longer!) talking about this ‘issue’, only to find there’s a way more important issue in the business & you have run out of time to IDS it?

I see this at almost all of the first lot of Level 10 Meetings that I observe with the leadership teams I work with.

It’s just a learning & discipline thing that can be easily corrected.

The solution is to hold each other to the task. Stop your fellow team members from hopping into the story & force it to be pushed down to the Issues List so that you can discuss it at Issue Solving time, if & only if it’s one of the most important issues.

Stick to reporting only at reporting time & you’ll find you have much more productive meetings.

2. Not solving issues at the root cause.

As humans, we love to jump to solving an issue really quickly. It’s human nature – we don’t want to waste time.

The challenge is that often, we don’t get to the root cause. And then the issue often reappears over & over again. The most important part of IDSing is the Identification or ‘I’ part.

In general terms, I suggest spending around 65% of your time asking questions to get to the real cause of the issue.

Ask clarifying questions like Why (up to 5 times), What, Who, When, How?

• Why is this an issue?
• And why is that?
• What is the impact?
• Who is it affecting?
• When did it start happening?
• How is it affecting them?
• Why is that?

Etc etc.

For more info, you can watch the Harvard video on the 5 whys . Watch here.

But for some real-life examples, feel free to drop me an email & I’ll happily spend half an hour with you, sharing several examples & showing you how they could have been solved better.

The next downfall is not exploring ALL of the options in the Discuss part.

I would suggest around 30% of the time, asking how we could solve this. And what else? And what else? Until you have all the possible options on the table.

Then, you can discuss the merits & cons of each option before making a decision as a team.

The final part, the Solve, should be the quickest part & it must be an action item for the next 7 days. A bit size chunk that can take you some way towards resolving the issue.

The solve doesn’t necessarily have to solve the full issue – it’s the first step towards solving.

3. Not preparing properly for the meeting.

I once sat through a level 10 meeting where one of the Leadership Team spent almost all of the 60 minutes of IDS, taking us through a spreadsheet & report line by line.

If this report was part of a solution from a previous issue – let’s say the action point was to do some more research or produce a report for the Leadership Team for the next meeting – then it’s probably best to circulate this report before the meeting, ask for the team to read it & tell them what you want them to give you as a result of reading this:

• Is there a decision to be made?
• Do you need them to give feedback?
• Or is it just for their information?

Whatever it is, circulate it beforehand, move straight to questions & then get the decision that you need.

And make sure that you have done some decent prep work before you come into the meeting, on all of the agenda items.

Good preparation for a meeting means that you have:

• Prepared your good news, personal & professional
• Reviewed your scorecard & are prepared to answer questions on it if you’re off track
• Reviewed your rock progress & milestones & are prepared to answer questions on it if you’re off track
• Prepared customer or staff headlines
• Ticked off your to-dos that you have done
• Thought about any issues that you have been asked to raise up to the LT L10 Meeting or that you have come across in your week.

I hope this has been helpful – I’m always more than happy to answer your questions about Level 10 Meetings – they’re one of my favourite EOS tools!

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