A Level 10 (L10) meeting is the weekly, 90-minute leadership meeting at the center of a business operating system like EOS or the Force Scaling Framework. You run it to the same seven-segment agenda every week, on the same day, at the same time, and you spend most of it solving the handful of issues that actually move the business. Ninety.io is the software that holds the agenda, times each segment, and captures the decisions so nothing leaks between meetings.
What is an L10 meeting?
The name comes from the goal: every person in the room should be able to rate the meeting a 10 out of 10 for value. It is not a status update and it is not a place to admire problems. It is a fixed cadence that surfaces what is off track, forces the team to decide what to do about it, and assigns a concrete owner and deadline before anyone leaves. The discipline is the point. When the agenda is the same every week, the team stops negotiating the format and starts using the time to think.
Ninety.io matters here because the friction of running this by hand — a shared doc, a spreadsheet scorecard, a running notes file — is exactly what erodes the discipline. The tool keeps the scorecard, the rocks, the issues list, and the to-dos in one place, times each segment, and archives the record automatically. That removes the excuses and lets the team focus on the work.
The seven-segment L10 agenda
The agenda is timed and it runs in order. Ninety.io shows a live timer for each segment so the facilitator can keep the room moving without playing hall monitor. The first five segments are deliberately fast — they exist to find issues, not to solve them.
1. Segue (5 minutes)
Everyone shares one personal and one professional win from the week. It sounds soft; it is not. The segue pulls the team out of the day’s firefight and into the room, and it builds the connective tissue that makes hard conversations later possible.
2. Scorecard review (5 minutes)
Walk the weekly numbers. In Ninety.io the scorecard shows each metric’s target next to the actual, so an off-track number is obvious at a glance. When a metric misses, you do not discuss it — you drop it to the issues list with one click and keep moving. Five minutes, not fifteen.
3. Rock review (5 minutes)
Rocks are the 90-day priorities. Each owner reports one word — on track or off track. Anything off track goes to the issues list. You are checking status, not solving; the solving happens later, once you can see the whole list and prioritize.
4. Customer and employee headlines (5 minutes)
Short, factual updates on client and team news. A headline that needs a decision or a discussion becomes an issue. Everything else is just shared and left alone.
5. To-do review (5 minutes)
These are the commitments made in last week’s meeting. The bar is roughly 90 percent done within seven days. Ninety.io checks off what’s complete and flags what’s overdue. A to-do that keeps slipping is usually a hidden issue — drop it to the list.
6. IDS — Identify, Discuss, Solve (60 minutes)
This is two-thirds of the meeting and the only segment where you actually work a problem. Prioritize the top three issues, then take them one at a time. Identify the real root cause — most stated issues are symptoms. Discuss only long enough to reach a decision. Solve it by creating a to-do with a named owner and a due date. Solving one issue completely beats touching ten.
7. Conclude (5 minutes)
Recap the new to-dos, decide what needs to be cascaded to the wider team, and have each person rate the meeting one to ten. Aim for an average of 8 or higher. A low rating is not a complaint — it is data. Ask why, and it becomes next week’s improvement.
What a real L10 looks like in Ninety.io
Say a leadership team of six meets every Tuesday at 9:00. By 9:25 they have run the segue, scorecard, rocks, headlines, and to-dos, and the issues list has grown to nine items — three from a missed sales metric, two from off-track rocks, the rest from headlines and a slipped to-do. During those first segments nobody solved anything; they just filled the list.
At IDS they prioritize the top three. The first issue looks like “demos are down.” Two minutes of identifying reveals the real cause: a broken hand-off between marketing and sales, where leads sit for days. They discuss briefly, decide who fixes the routing, and create a to-do owned by the sales lead, due next Tuesday. One click, and it lands on that person’s “My 90” dashboard. They work the second and third issues the same way. The remaining six issues stay on the list for next week — and that is fine. A short, honest list you actually close beats a long one you skim. At 10:30 they conclude, rate the meeting, and Ninety.io archives the whole record automatically.
Common mistakes
Discussing during the first five segments. The most common failure. The scorecard and rock reviews are for spotting issues, not solving them. The moment a team starts debating a red number, the meeting runs long and IDS gets squeezed. Drop it to the list and move on.
Working the issues list top to bottom. Prioritizing matters more than volume. Force the top three and solve them completely. An issue half-discussed and left open just returns next week, bigger.
Solving without an owner and a date. “We should look into that” is not a solve. If leaving IDS does not produce a to-do with a single named owner and a deadline, nothing changes and the same issue is back next Tuesday.
Letting the meeting drift off its slot. Same day, same time, same length. The predictability is what protects the leadership team’s calendar and trains everyone to bring their issues to the meeting instead of interrupting the week.
Treating the tool as the discipline. Ninety.io removes friction, but it does not run the meeting for you. The habit — showing up, staying on time, closing issues — is the operator’s job. The software just makes the habit easier to keep.
Get your weekly meeting running
A well-run L10 is the single highest-leverage hour on a leadership team’s calendar. Done weekly, it turns a running backlog of problems into a predictable rhythm of decisions — and Ninety.io keeps that rhythm honest so the team can focus on the work instead of the format.
At Force Scaling we help leadership teams stand up this cadence and run it until it sticks. If you are ready to implement Ninety.io or sharpen the L10 you already run, start on our Ninety Partner Page or reach out through our homepage.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should an L10 meeting be?
Ninety minutes, every week, on the same day and at the same time. Sixty of those minutes are reserved for IDS — identifying, discussing, and solving issues. The first five segments are kept short on purpose so the bulk of the hour goes to real problem-solving.
What does IDS stand for in an L10 meeting?
Identify, Discuss, Solve. You identify the true root cause of an issue rather than its symptom, discuss just long enough to reach a decision, and solve it by creating a to-do with a named owner and a due date.
Why use Ninety.io instead of a spreadsheet for L10 meetings?
Ninety.io holds the scorecard, rocks, issues list, and to-dos in one place, times each agenda segment, and archives every meeting automatically. That removes the manual friction that erodes meeting discipline and lets the team focus on solving issues.
What is a good L10 meeting rating?
Each participant rates the meeting one to ten at the end, and the team should average 8 or higher. A low score is useful data — ask why it was low, and the answer becomes the next improvement to the meeting.
