I see a lot of leadership teams who say they do not have enough time to work on the business.
They do not have time to:
Yet those same teams are spending 90 minutes together every week in their leadership team Level 10 Meeting®.
So where is the time going?
Usually, it is disappearing into operational detail.
Individual customers. Individual jobs. Individual staff issues. Scheduling problems. Delivery delays. Updates about what happened during the week.
A Level 10 Meeting is not an update meeting.
Updates can be shared through Slack, Teams or whatever communication platform your business uses. You do not need six or eight senior people sitting in a room while everybody takes turns reporting what they have been doing.
The Level 10 Meeting already gives you a quick pulse on the business.
You review your Scorecard, Rocks, Customer & Employee Headlines & To-Dos. When something is off track or needs further discussion, it drops to the Issues List.
You do not solve it during the update.
You IDS® it during the IDS section of the meeting.
That discipline matters because most of the Level 10 Meeting should be spent identifying, discussing, & solving the most important issues in the business.
If most of your meeting is spent sharing information that could have been read beforehand, you are wasting some of the most valuable time your leadership team has.
If most of the remaining time is spent managing individual pieces of work, you are not having a leadership meeting.
You are having a very expensive operations meeting.
What an Overly Operational Level 10 Meeting Looks Like
I have sat in leadership team Level 10 Meetings where most of the conversation has been about which employee is working on which job.
I have seen leadership teams spend 20 minutes discussing whether one particular customer received the right order.
I have watched senior leaders debate the details of one invoice, one project or one complaint.
I have seen Customer & Employee Headlines turn into long stories about individual customers & employees.
I have seen Scorecard numbers explained, justified & debated rather than simply called on track or off track.
I have seen Rock Reviews become detailed updates on everything someone has done that quarter.
I have seen leaders bring problems from their departments straight to the leadership team without first understanding the issue, identifying what has already been tried or establishing what they actually need from the wider team.
I have also seen meetings become a series of departmental reports, where each person talks about what happened during their week while everyone else waits for their turn.
None of those things is necessarily unimportant.
But that does not mean they belong in the leadership team Level 10 Meeting.
The leadership team should not be spending its time managing individual pieces of work.
It should be identifying & solving the issues that affect the whole business, threaten the Vision or require the combined capability of the leadership team.
What Actually Belongs at Leadership Team Level?
This is where people get really confused.
A problem does not belong at leadership team level simply because it feels urgent, frustrating or expensive.
It belongs there because it affects the wider business, crosses more than one function, requires a significant leadership decision or exposes a deeper issue that cannot be solved properly within one department.
That does not mean departments should hide substantial issues.
It also does not mean that every cross-functional issue requires another offline meeting involving half the leadership team. Most businesses already have enough meetings. Creating more is rarely the clever answer.
An issue should normally be understood & worked through at the department level first.
The leader bringing it to the leadership team should be able to explain:
By the time an issue reaches the leadership table, the team should not be starting from scratch.
The relevant leader should be bringing clarity, not simply dropping a messy problem in everyone else’s lap.
For example, one late customer delivery is probably an operational Issue.
Repeated late deliveries across multiple customers may be a leadership Issue involving capacity, process, structure, accountability, resourcing or promises being made by Sales that Operations cannot fulfil.
One employee struggling to perform is normally an Issue for their manager.
Repeated performance problems across a team may indicate unclear expectations, poor leadership, insufficient training, weak recruitment or the wrong structure.
One incorrect invoice is operational.
A pattern of incorrect invoices may reveal a broken process, unclear ownership, poor communication between departments or a system that no longer supports the needs of the business.
One unhappy customer may need immediate attention within the relevant department.
A growing number of unhappy customers may indicate that the business is making promises it cannot consistently deliver.
One project running over budget may be a project management Issue.
Most projects running over budget may reveal that the business is underquoting, failing to track costs, allocating resources badly or avoiding difficult conversations with customers.
The leadership team needs to look beyond the individual incident & ask:
That is leadership-level IDS.
Is the Issue in the Meeting or in Your Structure?
If your leadership team Level 10 Meeting is consistently too operational, it may not simply be a meeting problem.
It may be exposing a problem with your Accountability Chart®.
When the structure is unclear, issues bounce around the business.
Two people believe they own the same decision, or nobody believes they own it.
Departments blame one another.
Decisions are delayed while everyone waits for the founder, Visionary or Integrator to step in.
The leadership team Level 10 Meeting then becomes the place where every decision is made.
That is not leadership.
It is a bottleneck.
A strong Accountability Chart allows operational issues to be solved close to where the work is happening.
The leadership team should become involved when the Issue genuinely belongs at that level, not because every decision eventually finds its way upwards.
Do You Have the Right Meetings at the Right Levels?
If operational issues keep taking over the leadership team meeting, another question is whether your Meeting Pulse is working throughout the business.
If there is no effective meeting rhythm below the leadership team, operational matters will inevitably climb upwards.
The answer is not a collection of random offline meetings.
The answer is a clear Meeting Pulse at every appropriate level of the business.
Departmental Level 10 Meetings should deal with departmental Issues.
The leadership team Level 10 Meeting should deal with leadership Issues.
The meetings should connect cleanly. Issues should move upwards only when they genuinely require wider input or authority, while leadership decisions should be cascaded clearly back through the business.
Without that rhythm, everything lands at the top.
Do You Have the Right People in the Right Seats?
Once you have looked at the structure, you need to ask the more uncomfortable question.
Do you have the right people sitting around the leadership table?
A person can be excellent at managing their department without being ready or able to lead at a whole-of-business level.
Managers are naturally focused on the work in front of them.
They think about what needs to happen today, who is doing what, which job is late & how to keep things moving.
That work matters.
However, a member of the leadership team must also be able to lift their head.
They need to see beyond their own function. They need to understand how their decisions affect the rest of the business.
They need to identify patterns, challenge assumptions, solve underlying issues & make decisions for the good of the whole organisation, even when those decisions are not the easiest choice for their own department.
They need to arrive at the leadership table representing their function, but thinking as a leader of the entire business.
That does not mean operational detail is beneath them.
It means they know when to step into it & when to step back from it.
If someone repeatedly drags the leadership team meeting into the detail of their own department, there are several possible reasons.
They may not trust their team to handle the operational work.
They may not have a capable manager or team beneath them.
They may be holding on to responsibilities that should have been delegated.
They may not understand what is expected of them as a leadership team member.
They may lack the capacity to operate at the level their seat requires.
Or they may be a very capable manager sitting in a seat that requires a true leader.
That is not a judgement on their worth as a person.
It is a question of whether they are the right person for that particular seat.
Do they genuinely Get it, Want it & have the Capacity to do it?
The GWC® questions matter just as much at the leadership team level as they do anywhere else in the business.
Are They Leading or Merely Reporting?
A common warning sign is a leader who arrives at the meeting ready to report on activity rather than take accountability for results.
They explain what their department has been doing.
They tell the team how busy everyone is.
They provide reasons why a number is off track.
They list everything that has got in the way of completing a Rock.
They describe the problem in great detail.
But they do not own the outcome, identify the root cause or propose what needs to change.
Activity is not accountability.
Being busy is not the same as leading.
A strong leadership team member can say:
“This number is off track. Here is the real Issue. Here is what we have already done within the department. Here is why it now needs to be solved at leadership team level.”
That is a very different contribution from a 15-minute update explaining why things have not happened.
The Cost of Getting This Wrong
When leadership team Level 10 Meetings become operational, the biggest Issues in the business remain unsolved.
Very few people leave with genuine clarity.
Clarity creates confidence.
When the leadership team is clear about what belongs at the leadership level, what belongs within each function & who is accountable for what, the business can move faster.
The leadership team can finally focus on the work that only the leadership team can do.
Take a Hard Look at Your Next Level 10 Meeting
At your next leadership team Level 10 Meeting, pay attention to what you are actually discussing.
Then ask the harder questions.
That may be a carefrontational conversation.
It may also be the conversation your business most needs to have.
Because if your leadership team spends every week giving updates & running the operations, nobody is actually leading the business.
Your Business Action
Review the agenda or notes from your last three leadership team Level 10 Meetings.
Mark each substantial discussion as either:
Operational: It could & should have been owned within one department.
Leadership-level: It crossed functions, threatened the Vision, required a significant decision or exposed a deeper Issue affecting the business.
Then look at where the time really went.
If operational Issues dominated, do not simply tell everyone to “be more strategic”.
Look underneath the meeting.
Review your Accountability Chart.
Check that your departmental Meeting Pulse is working.
Ask whether every major function has clear ownership.
Then have the carefrontational conversation about whether you genuinely have the right people in the right seats.
If your leadership team is spending 90 minutes every week working in the business rather than leading it, let’s talk.
As a Certified EOS Implementer®, I help leadership teams create clarity, solve the real issues, & build the structure, accountability & meeting discipline needed to move the business forward.
Book a conversation with me & let’s work out whether the problem is your meeting, your structure, your people or, as is often the case, a combination of all three.
EOS®, Entrepreneurial Operating System®, Level 10 Meeting®, IDS®, Accountability Chart®, GWC®, & Certified EOS Implementer® are trademarks of EOS Worldwide, LLC.
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Debra Chantry-Taylor
Certified EOS Implementer | Accredited Family Business Advisor | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Speaker & Workshop Facilitator
