Recently I’ve discovered an interesting side effect of my clients advancing on their journey to mastering the Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS®). They learn to increasingly value their time and no longer tolerate anyone wasting it with long, pointless meetings. In fact, I’ve had clients harnessing the power of Level 10 Meetings with their vendors. Frankly, that’s music to my ears.
“My Favorite EOS Tool”
As a Certified EOS Implementer®, I hear all the time clients say Level 10 Meetings are their favorite EOS Tool. Why? Because they immediately get right to the heart of the one universally painful experience in business: the inefficient meeting.
Nearly all my clients recall pre-EOS days filled with walls of meetings that ran over into each other. They had little time to catch up on work (let alone attend to basic bio needs). So nearly everyone opened their laptops and attended to burgeoning workloads, only half-sheepishly admitting to “multitasking” if called upon.
Half the time, no one knew who “owned” the meeting or how anyone got on (or off) the invite list. Without set agendas, meetings turn into gabfests or gripe sessions. When the meeting mercifully ended, no one knew if they had any actions coming out of it. That didn’t matter, though; no one would remember or hold them accountable even if they did commit to something.
Sounds like meeting hell, doesn’t it? You can see why once a business owner escapes, they never want to return to that.
Client Becomes Facilitator
One client, in particular, relayed their experience with a new vendor, a PR agency. Ahead of beginning work, the agency wanted my clients to create a description of who they were. The agency said they’d give them a month to get back to them.
After that initial introductory meeting, my clients didn’t waste their monthly fees explaining who they were to the agency. They already knew that.
My client told them, “We don’t need a month.” And they promptly sent over their two-page Vision/Traction Organizer™ (V/TO™).
Stunned, the agency reps told them it usually takes two to three months to get going because they don’t understand the company. Then they have to figure out client priorities and where they want to go. Instead, my clients laid out where they wanted to go 10 years from now.
They could get started right away, they said. Then things got even weirder for those poor PR people.
Sharing the L10 Love
Remember that typical meeting hell they’d just left behind? They had no interest in returning to that, either. They explained to the agency team that they refused to waste a moment of time in inefficient meetings.
So as part of their agreement, my clients insisted they run Level 10 Meetings with the agency reps. The PR peeps played along with the description during their introductory meeting. They nodded along when my clients said they wanted to hold them accountable.
“For you to be our agency, when we meet with you, we need you to use this agenda,” they told them. They promptly shared the Level 10 Meeting agenda with them and walked them through their expectations.
And they stunned the agency folks again (boy, do I love my clients!).
They literally gave the agency team Rocks and a Scorecard. They walked through how to Identify, Discuss, and Solve (IDS™) issues forever.
After exactly one meeting, the PR people fell in love with the L10 agenda too. Now they want all their new clients to follow the same agenda.
But it gets better.
From there, my clients decided to start requiring the use of L10 agendas with all their other vendors as well. You start to see the ripple effect with everyone holding better meetings, taking names, and getting stuff done.
The Magic of the Level 10 Meeting Agenda
So why do so many of my clients (and their clients) love L10s? The magic lies in the simple, repeatable agenda.
Designed to keep your team focused on the most important business priorities, the agenda holds everyone accountable for their commitments. Each action item tracked has one owner. If a to-do doesn’t get to-done, only one person has to answer for why not.
Remember: Simple doesn’t mean easy. And it can take some teams longer than others to fully get the hang of it. But this does easily become one of the quickest wins for a team learning to run on EOS.
Ready to create magic too? Download the Level 10 Meeting Agenda and start using it in your next meeting.
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