The Level 10 is 7 blocks adding up to 90 minutes. The first 30 minutes are reporting: segue, Scorecard, Rocks, headlines, to-dos. The next 60 minutes are issue-solving using IDS. The meeting rates itself 1 to 10 at the end. The discipline is that reporting blocks stay short so the team protects the time to actually solve things.
What the Level 10 is
The Level 10 is the weekly leadership meeting in EOS®. The name comes from the rating ritual at the end: every attendee scores the meeting 1 to 10 on whether the team should leave feeling it was a 10 out of 10. It is the operating loop that turns Rocks, Scorecard, and Issues into actual weekly motion.
For the broader cadence around the Level 10 (quarterly, annual, monthly checkpoints), see the operating cadence stack and our ASCEND weekly leadership meeting agenda.
The full 90-minute agenda
- Segue, 5 min: personal and business bests.
- Scorecard review, 5 min: on-track vs. off-track numbers.
- Rock review, 5 min: each Rock marked on-track or off-track.
- Customer and employee headlines, 5 min.
- To-do list, 5 min: closing prior commitments.
- IDS, 60 min: identify, discuss, solve the most important Issues.
- Conclude, 5 min: recap to-dos, cascading messages, rating 1 to 10.
Segue (5 min)
Each attendee shares a personal and a business 'best' from the past week. It is not small talk. It is a deliberate context-switch from solo work into team work. Skipping it tends to produce a meeting that takes 15 minutes longer overall because the team is not actually present until block three.
Scorecard review (5 min)
Walk the Scorecard one number at a time. Each owner says 'on track' or 'off track' in one sentence. Off-track numbers do not get debated here; they get added to the Issues list and worked in IDS. Five minutes is the cap. If you cannot get through your Scorecard in five minutes, your Scorecard is too long.
Rock review (5 min)
Each owner reports their Rocks on-track or off-track. Same rule as Scorecard: off-track Rocks get added to Issues, not debated. The five minutes is for visibility, not problem-solving.
What a Rock actually is and how to set them well lives in our Rocks guide.
Headlines (5 min)
One sentence each on the most important customer headline and the most important employee headline from the past week. Wins, losses, surprises. Things the team needs to know but that are not Issues to solve. If a headline reveals an Issue, it goes on the list.
To-do list (5 min)
Walk last week's to-dos. Each one is either done or not done. Not-done items either roll into this week's to-dos or become an Issue. The Level 10 lives or dies on the percentage of to-dos closed each week. Below 80 percent reliably for three weeks running is the meeting telling you it has lost its teeth.
IDS (60 min)
This is two-thirds of the meeting. Look at the Issues list. The team votes (each person picks the top 3) and tackles the top issues in order using IDS.
- Identify: 30 to 60 seconds to name the real issue, not the symptom.
- Discuss: 3 to 10 minutes of focused conversation. Everyone speaks once before anyone speaks twice.
- Solve: one decision, one owner, one deadline. Captured as a to-do.
The single discipline that separates real Level 10s from theater: when an Issue is solved, the meeting moves on. No re-litigating, no 'one more thought' tour around the table.
Conclude (5 min)
- Recap to-dos in one fast pass.
- Decide what cascading messages go to the rest of the company.
- Each person rates the meeting 1 to 10. Anything below 8 gets a one-sentence reason.
The ratings ritual feels corny the first three weeks and becomes the most important diagnostic on the meeting's health by month two.
Common failure modes
- Letting reporting eat IDS time. If reporting takes 45 minutes, your team is not actually solving anything; they are status-checking.
- Skipping the rating. The rating is the team's only honest feedback loop on the meeting itself.
- Treating the Issues list as a parking lot. Issues older than 3 weeks are usually decisions the team is avoiding. Force them.
- CEO answering every question. If the CEO is the bottleneck inside the meeting, the meeting is reinforcing the bottleneck. See CEO bottleneck symptoms.
- To-do completion under 80 percent. The system is leaking commitment reliability and will eventually leak Rock completion.
Upgrades for $25M+
The Level 10 was designed for a 7-person team running one business. Above $25M, three upgrades start to matter.
- Split the Scorecard into leading and lagging. The basic format does not distinguish. At scale, you need leading indicators to call the quarter early.
- Add a decision log. The to-do list captures actions, not decisions. By $25M the team needs a record of what was decided and why.
- Layer a monthly business review. The weekly Level 10 plus quarterly offsite leaves a 12-week gap where slow-moving issues live. A 90-minute monthly closes the gap.
A full re-design for this stage lives in our ASCEND weekly leadership meeting guide and QBR template.
Outgrowing the Level 10? See the ASCEND cadence.
Take the 10-minute assessment to see whether your cadence and scorecard are still fit for purpose, and what the next version looks like.