Serious question: Do you love meetings?
*Crickets*
Yeah, me neither…
It’s probably not a surprise to hear that I hate boring meetings too — like, haaaaaaaate them.
But it might surprise you that there’s one kind of meeting I absolutely LOVE. It’s a kind of meeting that’s NOT boring and pointless and can actually revolutionize your effectiveness and help your business achieve its goals.
Ladies and gents, let me introduce you to the Level 10 Meeting using the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) framework.
Don’t have time to read this post? Watch the video here and here instead!
What Are EOS and L10 Meetings?
EOS is a business management system that focuses on five elements: Vision, People, Data, Issues, and Traction.
Level 10 Meetings (L10s) are part of the Traction element — and improve communication, transparency, and accountability.
L10s help keep the whole team focused and aligned with company goals with the same ambition you have about your fitness goals on January 1. But instead of fizzling out like your commitment to daily kale smoothies, L10s help you stick to your goals.
Leveraging Asana in EOS
What’s Asana?
Asana (a project management tool that many of you are probably already familiar with) aligns with L10 meetings. Here at 8 SIGNAL, we use the heck out of Asana because we find it super helpful (#NotASponsor).
By using Asana for your L10 meetings, you can ensure that your team stays organized, focused, and accountable — ultimately driving progress toward your marketing goals.
Here’s how.
Features of Asana That Enhance Your Level 10
Let’s look at specific Asana features to get your marketing (or leadership, or operations, or sales…) team’s Level 10 juices going. These are available even in the free version.
1. Projects and Sections
Create an Asana project for your L10 Meeting with sections for each agenda item. This gives you a structured space for easy access to important information.
2. Tasks and Subtasks
Break down rocks, action items, and issues into manageable to-dos using tasks and subtasks. This helps your marketing team track progress and maintain accountability.
3. Comments and Attachments
Make communication and collaboration within tasks easier by using comments for discussion and feedback. Attach relevant marketing documents and files for easy reference.
4. Due Dates and Reminders
Assign due dates to rocks, to-dos, and issues to keep your team on track. Asana can send reminders and notifications to ensure everyone stays on schedule.
5. Custom Tags and Fields
Add additional information to marketing tasks with custom tags — like priority level, campaign name, or progress status. This can help your team understand and prioritize tasks.
Other Level 10 Meeting Tools (That Aren’t Asana)
As much as we love Asana (again, #NotSponsored), it’s not the perfect tool for every situation.
At 8 SIGNAL, we also leverage other tools, like:
- Google Docs for meeting notes and core values;
- Google Sheets for scorecards and the vision traction organizer; and
- Google Slides if we want to have core values and make the VTO look pretty.
How To Run a Level 10 Meeting in Asana
Alright! Now that we’ve talked about Asana and L10s, let’s walk through how to facilitate a Level 10 Meeting.
You can set up each section in different ways and delete, change, or update how you run the Level 10 based on your preferences and the needs of your team. But here’s the outline.
A. Segue (5 Minutes)
Have each person share a professional and personal win to start the meeting on a positive note.
B. Scorecard Review (5 Minutes)
Go over your key metrics for your team. Stay focused on metrics, and keep discussion to a minimum. If you get stuck on a metric, keep discussion to a minute or less and (to use EOS terminology) “drop it down” to the issues list.
C. Rock Review
Next, look at both company and individual rocks. The person accountable for each rock will let everyone know if the rock is “on-track” or “off-track.”
If it’s off-track, briefly explain the issue, and the meeting’s scribe will add it to the issues list to talk about later.
If someone has questions about a rock that isn’t theirs, let them bring it up and add it to the issues list (to be discussed during the IDS portion).
D. Customer/Employee Headlines
Next, share any customer or employee headlines. This is another chance in the Level 10 Meeting for the team to share good news, bad news, updates, feedback, and areas for improvement. The chismosos love these five minutes!
E. To-Do List Review
In this section, everyone provides a status report on their L10 Meeting tasks from the previous week. (Make a note of how many total tasks are open because you’ll use this number at the end of this section.)
Asana has a great, free feature that you can activate to put numbers next to To-Dos. This is useful for quickly referencing tasks.
Each person either says “done” or “not done” without explanation (save that for the IDS portion of the meeting!). If there are questions or concerns, drop a note in the issues list. And if a follow-up task is needed after a task is complete (and there’s no further discussion required), capture the task in this To-Do List.
Going through this creates accountability. From personal experience, I feel squirrely if I show up to a second meeting without my To-Dos completed!
Scoring Completion Rates
There are a couple of ways to calculate the completion rate of your To-Dos.
- The meeting facilitator can mark it as completed so it disappears from the list. At the end of the list, switch from “incomplete tasks” to “tasks completed today,” do math, and get your percentage.
- Look at how many tasks were marked as complete and divide that number by the number you started with at the beginning of the To-Do review.
Ideally, you should be completing at least 80% of your to-dos each week. But don’t worry, you get to try again before next week’s Level 10 Meeting. See how the accountability thing works here? Very uncomfortable!
F. IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve)
Next is the IDS portion of your meeting — and this is where it can get squirmy, but it’s also where the most important issues are resolved!
- Ask if anyone has anything else to add to the Issues List.
- The Integrator or team leader prioritizes the most urgent issues to discuss. It’s good to select the top three and then start IDSing (a.k.a. solving issues) versus trying to prioritize the whole list. This ideally should take 30-60 seconds, but identifying the most important issues matters more than speed. You can do this ahead of the meeting, but keep in mind that you might need to reprioritize if other rock-related issues come up.
- Now that you’ve determined which issue to tackle, get at it!
- The scribe should take notes on rocks in the comment section for that rock so you can find them after the issue is marked complete.
- For other issues, take notes in the comment section of the Asana task.
- After you agree on a solution, add it to the description (not the comment section) to document the team’s input on that issue.
Problems → To-Dos
Eventually, this same task will become a to-do, go down to the VTO Issues List, or be absorbed into another project or team where it’ll become a cascading message.
On a healthy team, everyone will agree with the solution eight out of ten times. When they don’t, the Integrator makes the final decision. Not everyone will be pleased in these situations, but as long as they have been heard and the team is healthy, they can “disagree and commit” to support the decision with a united front moving forward.
G. Conclude
To finish up your Level 10 Meeting:
- Read through the new and unfinished to-dos, any new headlines and cascading messages that need to be shared with other teams, and then score the meeting on a scale of 1-10. And that, folks, is where the Level 10 gets its name! You want to shoot for Level 10 Meetings.
- For an extra layer of accountability, have each person read their own To-Dos out loud!
A Meeting That Can Supercharge Your Business
And there you have it!
That’s how you can use a tool that you’re (probably!) already familiar with to run meetings that actually end in solutions and accountability.
I hated meetings before discovering Level 10 Meetings. And you know what? Except for L10s, I still hate meetings!
But when you use Asana to run your L10s, your team can stay super organized, connected, and accountable, and you can track your progress and meet your goals like the pros that you are!
So get ready to do more, stress less, and have meetings that you love!
