The Level 10 Meeting structure encourages transparency and accountability through a structured agenda that includes reviewing key performance indicators, quarterly priorities, and solving important issues.
Transitioning to ClickUp from Bloom Growth for EOS implementation allowed for a more streamlined operational structure, integrating various management tasks into a single platform to enhance efficiency.
The adaptation of ClickUp for EOS, including the Level 10 Meeting, has significantly improved organizational clarity and accountability, demonstrating the flexibility and effectiveness of ClickUp in managing complex business processes.
Creating clarity and accountability throughout an organization is no easy feat, especially if you try to navigate this complex puzzle without the assistance of an expert. Fortunately, EOS simplifies this process, allowing business owners to confidently establish this level of transparency across their team.
Looking back at our journey, it’s clear to me that the first layer of clarity and accountability was paved when we established our Mission, Vision and Values.
Once we identified these components and aligned our team, things became much clearer.
Establishing our Mission powered our team’s passion and gave them the freedom to truly own their role in the company.
Sharing our Vision helped focus the team’s priorities and get them thinking 1, 3, and 10 years ahead.
Identifying our Core Values allowed us, as leaders, to quickly realize who would help us reach these massive benchmarks and reward those who were already living up to this mindset.
Though we had all of this in place, and a team that was loving the direction we outlined for the company through EOS, we still faced growing pains; most notably, accountability. This was revealed during our first Quarterly with Byron.
When we met up in November 2022, Chris, Ian and I all cited that accountability was lacking company-wide, that our SEO Department wasn’t functioning as we envisioned, and that the processes we implemented weren’t being used properly.
We took a step back and asked each other, How could we expect our team to function at the level we want without a clear, simple, and manageable process?
This realization bit at our egos, but it was constructive. See, we did have a process in place — one we thought we had finalized during the first half of EOS. However, it became clear that it was unpolished.
We immediately got to work refining our processes while we were all in Austin. What resulted was a much more manageable workflow that created clarity between the sales and SEO departments, and the SEO department and leadership.
However, that level of clarity would be nothing without the Level 10 Meeting, which we are now passing down to other departments within our organization.
What is the Level 10 Meeting?
The Level 10 meeting, within the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), is a weekly 90-minute check-in where all team members of a company-specific department come together and review progress towards their individual and company goals.
Level 10 meetings follow a structured approach, focusing on identifying priorities, solving issues and celebrating wins.
These meetings are not only crucial for maintaining accountability and aligning on priorities, but they also offer a chance for team members to actively participate in shaping the overall trajectory of the organization.
In-short, Level 10 meetings offer an opportunity for team members to come together, stay connected, solve issues, and work towards common goals that drive growth and success.
Bloom Growth and ClickUp
Let’s backtrack a bit to when we first got started with EOS.
At the time, we were using Bloom Growth (formerly called Traction Tools) — the recommended project management base for EOS Implementation.
What is Bloom Growth?
Bloom Growth is a software platform created to help companies implement the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) process.
Bloom Growth simplifies and streamlines key aspects of the Traction System, including the Level 10 Meeting.
Bloom Growth allows leaders to easily:
- Track actions from meeting-to-meeting
- Store notes and materials in an accessible online library
- Track important metrics such as revenue targets/ projections
- Prioritize top initiatives that move the company forward
- Hammer out meaningful strategies for tough projects and milestones
- Hold team members accountable in a straightforward way
Bloom Growth was and is a great system for implementing EOS. However, by the time we restarted our implementation journey with Byron, we had moved away from Bloom Growth, supplementing this with another project management tool, ClickUp.
What is ClickUp?
ClickUp is an all-in-one project management platform (similar to Asana, or Airtable) that helps businesses stay organized, on task and on time. All in all, ClickUp allows users to manage projects from start to finish with a single tool.
With ClickUp, project managers can create custom workflows, assign tasks, set deadlines and keep track of progress for each project. ClickUp also provides a highly customizable interface that makes it easy to customize the look and feel of each project as well as various tools and toolsets that help teams be productive.
ClickUp also offers a range of third party integrations so you can use ClickUp with other software like Slack, Zendesk, Zenefits and more. ClickUp is designed to be incredibly user-friendly, making it ideal for teams of all sizes and levels of experience.
Using ClickUp to Implement EOS
The decision to move away from Bloom Growth (Traction Tools) and build out the process within ClickUp came from the need to simplify our operational structure.
In the world of digital marketing (and pretty much every other business that’s trying to navigate the digital landscape) it’s not uncommon for agencies to use dozens of tools and softwares to run their organizations.
According to a report from Pegasystems Inc. that studied nearly 5 million hours of live desktop activity of operational support employees, they found that the average employee switches between 35 job-critical applications more than 1,100 times every day.
You might use one software as a CRM, another as a project management base, another for HR, one for communicating internally with your team, and on and on.
Having so many different software in one’s toolkit poses its own set of problems. For us, it was time management.
Forcing our team, and ourselves, to hop back from one application to another to perform our work was not only tedious, it allowed for too much error, and too little oversight — we had to simplify.
Another factor that inspired us to use ClickUp for EOS was the ability to assign and track Rocks, To-dos, etc. in the system we were already using to execute and track our workload — essentially creating a single source of truth for our organization.
Below I’ll explain how we structure EOS in ClickUp and how it’s working for us today.
1. The Level 10 Meeting in Clickup
The first thing we built out in ClickUp for EOS was the Level 10 Meeting.
The Level 10 consists of the following agenda, all of which is designed to keep team members on track, tease out issues for discussion, celebrate wins, and realign the team’s priorities week-over-week:
- Segue (5 minutes) — share a personal and business win.
- Scorecard (5 minutes) — review KPIs to see what goals were hit and which were missed.
- Rock Review (5 minutes) — review quarterly priorities and assess what’s “on-track” and what is “off-track”
- People Headlines (5 minutes) — customer and employee shoutouts (good/bad/neutral)
- To-Dos (5 minutes) — review action items assigned during IDS from the following L10 meetings
- IDS (60 minutes) — identify, discuss, solve important issues that move the company forward
- Conclusion (5 minutes) — score the meeting from 1-10, give justification on low scoring, review action items assigned during IDS.
When building our Level 10 in ClickUp it was important to create a structure that complemented the Meeting Pulse outlined in our EOS lessons.
As you can see from the outline above, time management is extremely important for staying on track and being as productive as possible.
We have 90 minutes every week to run through our Level 10 Meetings. Therefore, our system needed to be built in a way that complimented the Meeting Pulse and eliminated any clunky steps that could throw us off track.
Part of what made all of this possible in ClickUp was the ability to create relationships between tasks, quickly pass records from list to list, and apply automations to streamline the meeting agenda.
Here’s how our Level 10 Meetings are structured and how we operate them.
In ClickUp, we have a Space for Leadership. Permissions are set so only Chris, Ian, and I can access the information stored in that space.
In that Space there is a Folder titled EOS. The following Lists makeup that Folder:
- Level 10 Meeting
- Scorecard
- Company Rocks
- To-Dos
- Issues
The List titled LVL10 Meeting consists of a recurring Task that populates every week on the day we run our Level 10 Meetings.
The LVL 10 Meeting task includes subtasks that cover each of the 7 items outlined in the meeting agenda.
We have Custom Fields for the Business Quarter, Date Range, and Meeting Rating — this allows us to archive and organize past meetings, providing a historical view of our progress and an easy reference should we need to look at past records.
Let’s get started!
We meet on Tuesdays at 10:15 AM ET. Our Level 10 Meeting doesn’t officially start until 10:30 AM ET, but we block our calendars 15 minutes prior to start to allow for random banter, and to prevent other meetings from flowing into our timeblock.
Chris, Ian, and I rotate who runs the meeting each week. Whoever runs the meeting is responsible for cataloging the Business Quarter and Date Range that we’re covering.
Step 1:
At 10:30 AM, we immediately jump into the Segue by clicking into that Subtask and starting the timer. The Subtask has a template applied that includes our names and sections for personal and business wins so we don’t waste any time repopulating that week-over-week.
Step 2:
From there, we move into our Scorecard by clicking into the Scorecard list. We have a Google Sheet embedded in that list view, allowing us to easily transition between agenda items.
Chris setup formulas for our KPIs that allow us to easily see what was hit and what was missed (red vs. green). If an item is red and needs to be discussed, we drop it down to the issues list.
Step 3:
Then we click into the Company Rocks list. We have task statuses set to “On Track,” “Off Track,” “Not Done,” and “Done”
We quickly review progress on each item, and pass down issues accordingly by moving a task item into our IDS list as a duplicate with a relationship to the Rock — all of which is done in 2 clicks.
Side Note:
We recently revised our Company Rocks list to improve accountability for the leadership team.
At the start of each quarter, we list action items and collectively select what we believe are priorities for the next quarter.
We label the Function as either “Company Rock” or “Individual Rock,” set the due dates, business quarter, and leave a space for grading upon completion.
We require that core subtasks be added to the main task, so we can clearly see the steps needed to complete the item. And also have a progress tracker that can show how much of the Rock has been completed (assessed by how many subtasks are marked complete).
This structure encourages regular progression on Rocks and provides clarity on what was done and how far along each person’s progress is, so we can confidently say what’s on-track and what’s off-track week-over-week.
Step 4:
From here, we click back into the LVL 10 Meeting task in the LVL 10 list and open the People Headlines subtask. Again, there is a template for this subtask that includes our names, so we can quickly record our shoutouts.
If a shoutout requires discussion, for instance, one of our Client Account Managers recently went on maternity leave, we simply highlight that mention and convert it to a task in the IDS list. A relationship is created between the People Headline and IDS item for easy recollection.
Step 5:
Then we move into our To-Dos list in the EOS folder and review what was completed and what is overdue. Tasks are again passed down and we move into our IDS within the allotted 5 minutes.
Step 6:
Now the most fun part: IDS.
We use a Board view to track our Issues and prioritize items for discussion. We have statuses for Short Term Issues, Long Term Issues, To Discuss, and Solved.
At the start of IDS, each of us calls out what we want to discuss, and we simply drag and drop those items in the To Discuss column in the order or priority.
We have a template applied to each issue in the IDS list so we can provide background information on the issues, what our ideal outcome is, why it’s important, and any action items derived from the discussion.
Whoever is running the meeting, clicks into the Issue and records what we discuss. We assign tasks in that issue, highlighting them in the same manner we do People Headlines, so we can derive action items that have a relationship to the Issue — that way, when we’re working on our To-Dos and need clarification on why they’re important, we have a quick reference to the Issue.
Step 7:
Finally, we conclude, giving our meeting score, which is recorded on the LVL 10 Meeting and recap our To-Dos.
We make sure all of the subtasks in the meeting agenda are marked complete before closing the main task. An automation triggers that duplicates our meeting agenda with a start date set to the following week.
The L10 Meeting is complete in the allotted 90 minutes, and we move on with our days.
2. V/TO, Accountability Chart, Core Values Speech
We also house our V/TO, Accountability Chart, and Core Values Speech in ClickUp as a View in the EOS Folder. Our V/TO is built on a whiteboard, our Accountability Chart uses a mind map, and the Core Values Speech is a document.
We basically skipped filling out our Accountability Chart and V/TO during our first EOS run, which is why this was added later once we restarted the process with Byron.
Since these documents are fluid, it made sense to store them in the same place we’re housing all of our EOS work, so we can make updates when they present themselves.
Conclusion
Byron has supervised a few of our L10 Meetings and provided his feedback on our structure in ClickUp. All in all, he was happy with what he saw and gave his seal of approval (following a few minor edits).
Our system for executing L10 Meetings in ClickUp has come a long way since we first built it out. Through automations and relationships, we’re able to stay on track, keep organized, and reach our quarterly targets all while having increased clarity and accountability.
One really cool thing that came out of this was that an SEO client of ours, Spyglass Realty, who is also running EOS and uses ClickUp, asked us to build out a similar system for them. Naturally, we did this free of charge because it allowed us to live up to our higher purpose of Being a company that our customers and employees love.
If you’re interested in a full walkthrough of the Level 10 Meeting in ClickUp, check out the video tutorial we provided Spyglass Realty after we implemented this for them.
