Traction warned that it
would take a few quarters to get the Rocks right, but I was unprepared for
ambiguity in the L10 meeting. After all,
it is basically an accountability meeting which also resolves issues, and I’ve
been facilitating those for the past 17+ years. This article offers Five Lessons from the Road
5 weeks in to holding L10 meetings as part of a “DIY” EOS Implementation
initiative offering learnings worth sharing for others who may also be just
starting out in implementing Traction, Rocks, and L10 meetings.
1. Start On Time – First, my laptop was 2 minutes fast, then we had
some technical difficulty getting the one remote person online and deciding if
the Facilitator or Note Taker was going to project the computer screen. A third time I scheduled myself into work that
went right up to the meeting start time.
a. Learning: Get to the
meeting location 10 minutes early to get setup, projector working, and have
Facilitator project; Note Taker do the copy/paste of Rocks to Issues List and
type up Action Items in background – we use an Excel Online spreadsheet for
tracking everything, though I have heard of success with Google Sheets as well.
2. Meeting feels “choppy” – this on/off “no
discussion” thing and truncating “rabbit hole” discussions – we are just
getting used to this now. In fact, I
literally had to cut the CEO off this morning to stick to On/Off during Rock
Review and re-bring up the topic he started to discuss at the Headlines/New
Issues agenda item to ask if he wanted to add a new issue to the list for that
day (he did)
a. Learning: This seems to come with time, but amazingly
our L10 meeting is only 60 minutes (instead of the 90 recommended) and we get
through all of our High priority issues each week, and most of the Mediums;
sometimes all. If discussion seems
redundant, I’ll try to summarize or call out for an action item and ask if
there is anything else new or material to discuss, and if not; we close out the
issue or punt to more information needed via Action Item and move on. We are getting used to each other and the
style of the meeting; it may take a while longer to really hit our stride here.
3. Scoring – originally we allowed this to be completely
subjective – “10 for the best meeting ever” and “1 for a complete waste of
time.” We did this for 2 meetings, then
I spoke with a colleague, EOS Implementor Eric Albertson, who advised to score
objectively. I also read “What the Heckis EOS?” and found that it actually gives the same advice, including
suggestions of how to score.
a. Learning: Develop an objective
Scorecard. We maintained 1 point for “Overall
Subjective” because I want interpersonal and intuition to still have a small
piece; and the “Everyone Aligned” really is subjective to each individual, but
the rest should be fairly black and white.
Here is our scoring checklist:
4. What are “Issues?” – We have had some “Issues”
that really felt more like Headlines. In
other words, there was no decision to be made, but more of an update possibly
with some Q&A to clarify what was going on.
a. Learning: We decided
that these could stick with the “Headlines” portion of the Agenda, just
following Rock Review and just prior to To-Dos (Action Item review). This is the first week we are doing that, but
it was well received. We also are okay
to add Issues with a partnering To Do that represent a decision making meeting
offline if the topic is important for L10 Leadership Team but will be worked
offline with a future decision. Still
working out the kinks with this one, but recognizing that sometimes a Status
Update is still important, and recall that Headlines can be internal or
external, that seemed the place to put it.
5. Parking Lot – We put a To-Do on for something which really is
not “move the needle” important in the next 2 weeks, but no one wanted to
drop. We gave it a 4 week due date, but
then I re-read Traction and that To Dos should be completed in 1 week, 2 at
most. What to do with these small-ish
things that aren’t Rock-worthy, but also shouldn’t be lost?
a. Learning: Add“Parking
Lot” for this type of thing. We are now collecting all the Issues
which didn’t make it as this quarter’s Rocks, as well as possible Issues for
next quarter that come up whenever, and we will put Parking Lot actions on
it. The idea is that some of the Parking
Lot actions may be grouped into a single Rock if there is a theme, or that when
we are “less busy” or when the time seems more appropriate, we will return to
the Lot to pick up those Actions. Since
we just started that today, it’s unclear how well it will work, but it does
seem logical to document those items but not necessarily spend calories on them
today if there are bigger rocks to get in our jar first.
Hope these lessons help
others in their journey to implement EOS!
Read
this article and more on AJC’s blog, and sign up for our newsletter online at: http://andreajonesconsulting.com/blog.aspx
