EOS Level 10 Meetings: Why Most Business Meetings Fail (And How to Fix Them)

We’ve all been there. You’re sitting in a conference room (or on a Zoom call) listening to someone ramble about last quarter’s numbers while another person checks email under the table. The meeting that was supposed to last an hour stretches to ninety minutes, covering everything except the actual problems that need solving. Everyone leaves frustrated, and nothing changes.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone. Most business meetings are broken.

After implementing EOS in our own company and watching clients do the same, we’ve discovered that the problem isn’t meetings themselves—it’s how we run them. The Level 10 Meeting format has turned our weekly leadership sessions from dreaded time-wasters into the most productive 90 minutes of our week.

Here’s what we’ve learned about why most meetings fail and how to fix them.

The Anatomy of a Broken Meeting

Walk into most leadership team meetings and you’ll see the same patterns:

No clear agenda. People show up not knowing what they’re supposed to accomplish. The meeting becomes whatever the loudest person wants to talk about.

Endless updates. Half the time gets spent sharing information that could have been sent in an email. “Here’s what I did last week” isn’t a meeting—it’s a report.

Issue avoidance. When real problems come up, they get tabled for “offline discussion” or pushed to next week. The meeting becomes a place where issues go to die.

No accountability. Decisions get made (maybe), but no one takes responsibility for follow-through. The same topics resurface week after week because nothing actually gets done.

Time creep. The one-hour meeting regularly runs ninety minutes. The ninety-minute meeting hits two hours. People start showing up late because they know it won’t start on time anyway.

One client told us their weekly leadership meetings had become so unproductive that team members would volunteer for conflicting appointments just to avoid attending. When your leadership team is actively avoiding leadership meetings, you have a problem.

Enter the Level 10 Meeting

The Level 10 Meeting is EOS’s solution to meeting dysfunction. It’s a weekly 90-minute leadership team meeting with a specific agenda, strict timing, and a clear purpose: to keep your leadership team aligned and your company moving forward.

The name comes from the meeting’s closing ritual. At the end of every session, each participant rates the meeting on a scale of 1-10. Anything below an 8 gets discussed and improved. The goal is to consistently hit Level 10 meetings—sessions so productive and focused that everyone leaves energized instead of drained.

The Meeting That Actually Works

Here’s the Level 10 Meeting agenda, with timing that never varies:

Segue (5 minutes): Personal check-ins. Not business updates—personal. “What’s going well in your life?” or “What are you excited about this week?” This isn’t touchy-feely nonsense. It’s recognition that people perform better when they feel connected to their teammates.

Scorecard Review (5 minutes): Quick review of your company’s weekly numbers. No discussion, no problem-solving—just “Is this number on track or off track?” Issues that emerge get added to the Issues List for later discussion.

Rock Review (5 minutes): Progress update on quarterly priorities. Again, just “on track” or “off track” for each rock. Problems get noted but not solved here.

Customer/Employee Headlines (5 minutes): Good news worth sharing. New client wins, employee recognitions, positive feedback. This isn’t comprehensive reporting—it’s highlighting wins that deserve celebration.

To-Do List Review (5 minutes): Quick check on action items from previous meetings. Done or not done. If not done, either complete it in the next seven days or move it to the Issues List.

IDS (60 minutes): The meat of the meeting. Identify, Discuss, and Solve your most important issues. This is where real work happens.

Conclude (5 minutes): Recap decisions, confirm action items, and rate the meeting.

Total time: exactly 90 minutes. No exceptions.

The Level 10 Meeting format has been a game-changer for our own leadership team and several clients who’ve implemented it consistently. If you want to dive deeper into the IDS process and other EOS meeting tools, Wickman’s book Traction includes detailed scripts and examples for running effective meetings at every level of your organization.

The Magic of IDS

The IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) process is what makes Level 10 Meetings actually productive. Most meetings try to solve problems without first agreeing on what the problems are. IDS forces you to separate these steps.

Identify: What are the real issues facing your business this week? Not symptoms or complaints—actual problems that need solving. The rule is simple: if it will impact the business and take more than seven days to resolve, it goes on the Issues List.

Discuss: Before jumping to solutions, make sure everyone understands the issue the same way. What’s really happening? Why is it happening? What are the implications? Often, what looks like a sales problem is really a delivery issue. What seems like a people problem is actually a process breakdown.

Solve: Only after everyone agrees on the real issue do you move to solutions. What specific actions will resolve this problem? Who’s responsible? By when? The solution has to be concrete and measurable.

One of our clients used to spend entire meetings discussing their “customer retention problem” without making progress. Using IDS, they discovered the real issue wasn’t customer satisfaction—it was that their billing system was confusing, leading to payment delays that triggered their collections process, which damaged relationships with otherwise happy clients. They solved the root cause in three weeks.

Building Meeting Discipline

The hardest part of implementing Level 10 Meetings isn’t learning the agenda—it’s developing the discipline to stick to it.

Start on time. If the meeting is scheduled for 9:00 AM, it starts at 9:00 AM. Not 9:05 when the last person arrives. This trains people that the meeting time is serious.

Stick to the timing. Five minutes for Scorecard Review means five minutes. When time is up, move on. Issues that need more discussion go on the Issues List.

Stay focused. When someone starts down a rabbit hole during Rock Review, the meeting leader says, “Let’s add that to Issues.” When a tangent starts during IDS, someone calls it out and redirects.

One meeting at a time. No phones, no laptops, no side conversations. The meeting deserves everyone’s full attention for 90 minutes.

Rate and improve. The closing rating isn’t just ceremony. When meetings consistently score below 8, something needs to change. Maybe the Issues List isn’t getting the right problems. Maybe discussions are taking too long. Maybe the wrong people are in the room.

The Ripple Effect

When leadership teams master Level 10 Meetings, the discipline spreads throughout the organization. Department meetings become more focused. Project reviews follow similar structures. People start bringing solutions instead of just problems.

We’ve seen this with multiple clients. Once their leadership team develops a rhythm of productive meetings, other teams start asking for training on the same format. The culture shifts from “meetings are necessary evils” to “meetings are where we get important work done.”

One client’s sales team adapted the Level 10 format for their weekly pipeline reviews. Instead of hour-long rambling sessions about individual deals, they now spend 15 minutes on metrics, 15 minutes on priorities, and 30 minutes solving specific obstacles. Their close rate improved 20% in six months.

Common Implementation Mistakes

Skipping the personal segue. It feels like wasted time, but those five minutes of personal connection make the rest of the meeting more effective. Teams that skip it report lower meeting satisfaction and more interpersonal tension.

Turning reviews into discussions. The Scorecard, Rock, and To-Do reviews are just that—reviews. When you start problem-solving during these segments, you blow up the timing and duplicate effort with IDS.

Weak Issues Lists. “We need better communication” isn’t an issue—it’s a complaint. “Our project handoff process causes 30% of client complaints” is an issue you can solve.

No follow-through. If action items from Level 10 Meetings don’t get completed, the meeting loses credibility fast. Better to assign fewer tasks that actually get done.

Wrong attendees. Level 10 Meetings are for your leadership team—typically 3-7 people who run major functions of the business. If someone doesn’t need to be involved in most issues, they shouldn’t be in the meeting.

Making the Transition

If your current meetings are disasters, don’t try to fix everything at once. Start by implementing just the timing and agenda structure. Get comfortable with the rhythm before worrying about perfect IDS technique.

Expect resistance. People who are used to wandering meetings will initially feel constrained by the structure. Stick with it. After a few weeks, most teams wonder how they ever got anything done in their old format.

The transformation usually happens around week four or five. That’s when teams stop fighting the structure and start appreciating how much they accomplish in 90 focused minutes.

The Real Test

Here’s how you know Level 10 Meetings are working: people start protecting them. Instead of scheduling conflicts, team members move other appointments to preserve the weekly leadership meeting. Instead of dreading them, people look forward to the focused time together.

That’s when you know you’ve built something valuable—a weekly habit that actually moves your business forward instead of just filling time on everyone’s calendar.

We’ve seen EOS work for Rare Bird—and for several clients. Wondering whether it could solve some of your operational challenges?

Let’s Talk

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