What are Level 10 Meetings? [+ Free Template]

Time is money, and unproductive meetings burn through both. Poorly organized meetings are estimated to cost US businesses $399 billion a year, according to Doodle's 2019 State of Meetings report.

Level 10 Meetings are built to solve that problem. Used by businesses of all sizes and industries, these meetings follow a structured format that keeps teams accountable and focused on tackling your most pressing issues.

In this guide, we'll cover what Level 10 Meetings are, how to run the full 90-minute agenda, and share a free copy-paste template you can use right away.

What is a Level 10 Meeting?

A Level 10 (L10) Meeting is a structured 90-minute weekly session for leadership teams, built on the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). It follows a seven-section meeting agenda focused almost entirely on surfacing and solving your team's most critical issues. At the end, attendees rate the meeting from 1 to 10. The goal is always a 10.

Who attends?

A Level 10 meeting is attended by an organization's core leadership team. This includes department heads from areas like marketing and finance, alongside the company's Visionary (strategic founder) and Integrator (operational leader). As the company scales, individual departments may also run their own L10 meetings to keep their teams aligned.

How often and how long?

L10 meetings happen once a week and last exactly 90 minutes. To protect calendars and maintain momentum, hold them on the same day and time each week, always starting and ending on time.

The Level 10 Meeting Agenda

The L10 follows a fixed seven-section meeting agenda every week. Here is exactly how those 90 minutes break down:

Section	Time	Purpose
Segue	5 min	Good news and mindset transition
Scorecard Review	5 min	Track trailing 13-week metrics
Rock Review	5 min	Check 90-day strategic priorities
Headlines	5 min	Share customer and employee news
To-Do List	5 min	Binary accountability check
IDS	60 min	Identify, Discuss, and Solve critical issues
Conclude	5 min	Recap action items, cascade messages, and rate the meeting

Segue (5 min)

Every L10 meeting starts with a quick round of personal and professional wins. Each attendee shares one personal victory and one work victory from their week. This helps the leadership team step away from daily fires and focus on big-picture goals.

Keep it to one sentence per person. The facilitator must cut people off if they start telling long stories. Enforcing this time limit sets a firm standard for the rest of the session.

Tip: Ask the facilitator to keep their own update under ten seconds to demonstrate the expected pace.

Scorecard Review (5 min)

The scorecard tracks 5 to 15 weekly metrics, such as sales calls made, proposals sent, or support tickets closed. Each metric has one owner who reports whether they are on track or off track.

There are no explanations, context, or excuses allowed here. If a metric is off track, the facilitator says "drop it to the Issues List," and the team moves on immediately.

Tip: The most common mistake here is letting off-track items trigger a full discussion. Save those conversations for the IDS section later in the meeting.

Rock Review (5 min)

Rocks are the three to seven most important priorities the company must accomplish this quarter. During this phase, each owner gives a status update about whether they are on track or off track. Any delayed Rock goes straight to the Issues List.

Do not waste time with defensive explanations or saying a project is mostly on track. A priority is either entirely on schedule or it is not. Sticking to this strict rule cuts out the storytelling and is exactly what keeps the review under five minutes.

Tip: If a Rock stays off track for three weeks in a row, your IDS sessions are missing the root cause. That is a pattern worth calling out.

Headlines (5 min)

Each person shares one significant customer or employee update. Good news gets a quick acknowledgement from the team. Bad news that requires real action goes right onto the Issues List.

This section easily runs over time if you let it. As such, the facilitator must be strict about protecting the clock.

Tip: Keep your headlines to one sentence each. If an update requires a deeper conversation, save it for the IDS section.

To-Do List (5 min)

The facilitator reviews last week's action items one by one. Each item is either done or not done. Incomplete tasks either roll forward to next week or join the Issues List.

A healthy team completes at least 90% of their tasks every week. If your team consistently misses that benchmark, use the IDS section to uncover the root problem.

Tip: The no-commentary rule feels harsh at first, but it is exactly what restricts this section to five minutes instead of twenty-five.

IDS: Identify, Discuss, Solve (60 min)

This is the heart of the meeting. Everything that joined the Issues List during the first five sections gets reviewed here. The team votes on the top three most important issues to tackle right now, then works through each one in order.

Each issue follows three steps:

Identify: Dig past the surface symptom to find the real problem. Teams often waste time describing a situation rather than solving it. The facilitator must push the room past small talk to find the source.
Discuss: Everyone speaks openly. Debate hard, but keep the conversation locked on the primary issue instead of chasing adjacent topics.
Solve: Close the issue only when you make a clear decision or create a next step. Assign a named owner and a due date, then let that person add it to the to-do list.

Once you fully resolve an issue, proceed to the next one. Continue until five minutes remain.

Tip: Never feel obligated to finish the entire list. It is much better to solve your top three issues completely than to skim through ten of them.

Conclude (5 min)

Review all new to-dos added during the meeting. Confirm anything that needs to be communicated to the wider team, which is called the Cascading Messages step. Then, rate the meeting from 1 to 10.

If the score is below 8, ask briefly what dragged it down. Note the feedback and finish the call.

Tip: Invite Fireflies to your meeting so it can handle the tracking for you. Fireflies delivers accurate action items and meeting minutes automatically, so the person tracking issues can actually help solve them instead of just writing them down.

How to Score a Level 10 Meeting

You score a Level 10 meeting by having each attendee rate the session from 1 to 10. Ask a direct question: "How well did we run today's meeting?" during the final five-minute segment of the meeting. A healthy session requires an average team score of 8 or higher to meet EOS standards.

If your scores consistently drop below an 8, use that data to troubleshoot your framework. Look at your 60-minute IDS block first. Teams usually score low because they spent an hour talking in circles instead of making decisions.

Other common mistakes that drag your Level 10 meeting scorecard down:

The meeting runs over time because the facilitator fails to cut off long stories and protect the clock.
The IDS section drifts off-topic and turns into a venting session instead of focusing on root causes.
People show up unprepared to report their metrics, wasting valuable agenda time looking up data.
Too many attendees crowd the room, stalling debate and dragging out simple decisions.

For example, if a department head rates a meeting a 6 because a pipeline debate ate into your rock review, you know exactly where you lost control of the clock. Note that feedback, tighten your section time limits next week, and push back toward a 10.

Level 10 Meeting Template (Copy-Paste)

Copy this template into Google Docs, Notion, or wherever your team works. Use it to map out your agenda before the call and log updates in real time. If you choose to manually handle taking meeting minutes, assign one teammate to update the fields. To automate your tracking instead, configure Fireflies to capture your tasks and deliver your summaries right after the session. Fireflies.ai does not use customer data to train any AI models.

LEVEL 10 MEETING Example

Date: [Date] | Facilitator: [Name] | AI Assistant: Fireflies

SEGUE (5 min)

[Name]: Personal win / Professional win
[Name]: Personal win / Professional win
[Name]: Personal win / Professional win

SCORECARD (5 min)

Metric	Owner	Target	Actual	Status
[Metric]	[Owner]			On track / Off track

Off-track items to add to the Issues List:

ROCK REVIEW (5 min)

Rock	Owner	Status
[Rock]	[Owner]	On track / Off track

Off-track priorities to add to the Issues List:

HEADLINES (5 min)

Customer updates:
Employee updates:

Roadblocks or wins to add to the Issues List:

TO-DO LIST (5 min)

Task	Owner	Done / Not done
[Task]	[Owner]

Incomplete tasks to carry forward or send to the Issues List:

IDS (60 min)

Full Issues List:

Top 3 to tackle today (team vote):

Issue 1: Root cause / Decision or next step / Owner / Due:
Issue 2: Root cause / Decision or next step / Owner / Due:
Issue 3: Root cause / Decision or next step / Owner / Due:

CONCLUDE (5 min)

New to-dos:

Task	Owner	Due Date
[Task]	[Owner]	[Date]

Cascade to wider team:
Meeting score (1–10):
What would improve the next meeting:

Tips for Running a Better L10

The Level 10 agenda only works if you stick to the mechanics. Here is how to keep your team focused and your 90 minutes on track:

Get concerns onto the document early. Enter items onto your agenda before the session begins. Bringing up surprise topics during the live call ruins your focus and wastes valuable problem-solving time.
Focus the facilitator entirely on pace. The person leading the call should not actively solve problems. Their only job is to protect the clock and keep the agenda moving forward.
Kill recurring items immediately. If the exact same issue sits on your agenda three weeks in a row, stop arguing over symptoms. Reset the conversation and push the team to re-identify the main problem.
Keep your document visible to everyone. For remote or hybrid teams, share your screen throughout the call. Keeping the working text on screen helps everyone track updates in real time.
Freeze critical decisions for full attendance. If a core leadership member is missing, postpone major organizational votes. Voting without them only guarantees you will waste time repeating the exact same debate next week.

Running Level 10 Meetings Remotely

Enforcing a tight agenda is much harder when your leadership team isn't in the same room. Use these four rules to keep your virtual remote team meetings on track:

Share your screen throughout the call. Keep the active meeting document visible to everyone. This simple step keeps the entire team focused on the exact same line item in real time.
Send out your metrics early. Distribute the scorecard and issues list an hour before the call starts. Reviewing the numbers in advance ensures nobody wastes meeting time reading updates for the first time on video.
Call out your time limits. Tracking the clock is much harder over video. Ask the facilitator to use clear verbal cues to close out topics and switch agenda sections on schedule.
Automate your meeting workflow. Stop assigning manual typing duties during video calls. Use Fireflies to record, transcribe, and summarize remote sessions automatically so your team can stay focused on the conversation.

How Fireflies Handles Note-Taking in Level 10 Meetings

Every L10 meeting requires tracking. The person handling this must capture every new task, every problem resolved, every cascade item, and the final meeting scores, all while actively participating in the conversation.

In practice, especially during the fast-paced IDS section, this is incredibly hard. Root causes shift, decisions get revised mid-discussion, and action item owners change quickly.

Instead of losing a teammate's focus to manual text updates, invite Fireflies to your meeting to transcribe your discussions. Once you bring Fireflies into the call, it tracks your conversation and captures key metrics, decisions, and action items in real time. After your session ends, Fireflies generates a structured meeting summary and automatically pushes those tasks straight into your project management platforms.

To see how this works in practice, here is what a typical post-meeting overview looks like after an intense leadership session:

Sample Fireflies L10 Meeting Overview

Meeting: Weekly Leadership Alignment

Date: May 24, 2026

Smart Search & Topics Detected

📊 Scorecard Review (00:04:15)
🎯 Rock Progress (00:09:30)
🛠️ IDS Session (00:18:45)

Executive Summary

The leadership team conducted their weekly L10 alignment session. The primary focus centered on addressing a trailing scorecard metric regarding outbound sales pipelines and resolving two critical operational blockers during the IDS section.

Scorecard Status Updates

❌ Metric: Outbound Lead Volume
- Owner: Sarah
- Target: 150 leads/week
- Actual: 112 leads/week
- Status: Off track (Dropped to Issues List)

Resolved Issues (IDS)

Issue 1: Sales Pipeline Drop
- Root Cause: The team identified the pipeline dip as an unoptimized routing rule in the new CRM migration.
- Decision: Revert the routing logic to the previous configuration to stabilize incoming outbound leads.
- Owner: Sarah
- Due Date: May 25, 2026
Issue 2: Customer Success Onboarding Blocker
- Root Cause: Delayed customer onboarding setups were traced back to a missing legal template for enterprise clients.
- Decision: The legal team approved a standardized stop-gap template to clear the current queue immediately.
- Owner: David
- Due Date: May 26, 2026

Action Items & New To-Dos

📝 @Sarah: Revert the CRM routing logic to the previous configuration to stabilize incoming outbound leads. Due: May 25
📝 @David: Send the approved stop-gap onboarding template to all pending enterprise clients in the queue. Due: May 26
📝 @Elena: Draft the final, permanent version of the enterprise service agreement for full executive review next week. Due: May 30

Try Fireflies for Your Next L10 Meeting

Manual typing pulls a teammate out of the conversation every time. Set Fireflies to automatically record, transcribe, and summarize your weekly sessions so your team can stay focused on driving growth.

👉 Get started with Fireflies for free today

FAQs about Level 10 Meetings

What is the difference between a Level 10 meeting and a regular standup?

Daily standups are quick, 15-minute operational check-ins focused purely on immediate daily tasks and personal blockers. In contrast, an EOS Level 10 meeting is a weekly, 90-minute strategic session designed to review core metrics and solve root-cause problems.

How do you score a Level 10 meeting?

Attendees rate the session's overall effectiveness on a scale from 1 to 10 at the end of every meeting. The collective goal is to average an 8 or higher, and anyone scoring below an 8 should briefly explain what dragged it down.

What is IDS?

IDS is the acronym for Identify, Discuss, and Solve. It is the problem-solving framework that teams use to address issues during Level 10 meetings. Using IDS, you can quickly identify the root causes behind conflicts and assign clear action steps to specific owners.

How many people should attend?

Leadership or departmental teams of 3 to 7 people should attend the Level 10 meeting. Keeping the group in this range keeps accountability tight and discussion focused.

Who facilitates?

The Integrator or a designated team leader facilitates the L10 meeting. They keep everyone strictly on schedule and prevent the team from drifting into unproductive tangents.

Can remote teams run effective L10 meetings?

Yes, remote teams can run effective L10 meetings by utilizing video conferencing and shared digital dashboards. Screen sharing and a shared agenda keep remote teams on the same line item, even across time zones.

What happens if the meeting consistently scores below 8?

A consistent low score means your meeting process isn't running the way it should. Use this rating data to audit your operations and pinpoint exactly where things are breaking down. Things like poor preparation and facilitator time overruns can cause your scorecard ratings to drop.

Run a True Level 10 Session

The Level 10 meeting format works because every minute is strictly accounted for and every leadership role is defined. To scale your operations effectively, use the template, hold tight to your established time limits, and let the IDS process isolate and resolve your biggest operational roadblocks. Fireflies captures every decision and organizes your action items into clean, structured summaries, delivered straight to your email, Slack, and project management tools right after your session ends.

Try Fireflies for free today.