Okay, let\’s be brutally honest for a second. Meetings. Just typing the word makes my shoulders tense up. That familiar dread. You know the drill: calendar invite pings, you click \’accept\’ out of reflex, shuffle into the room (or the Zoom waiting room, same difference these days), and brace yourself. Half the folks are mentally checked out, scrolling Slack or pretending their camera\’s frozen. Another quarter are passionately debating something completely off-agenda. And the rest? Just trying to figure out why they’re even here. Again. You leave an hour later, vaguely irritated, with a head full of half-baked ideas and precisely zero clarity on what anyone actually committed to doing. Sound familiar? Yeah. Thought so.

I hit a wall with this a few months back. Seriously, it felt like my entire workweek was dissolving into a lukewarm puddle of fragmented conversations and unresolved action items. My team? Talented, driven people, but our syncs felt like herding particularly opinionated cats. Progress stalled. Momentum died. That gnawing frustration – feeling like we were running harder and harder but staying firmly in place – became a constant background hum. I was drowning in the \”busy work\” of meetings instead of actually doing the work. Something had to give. I was too tired for another motivational podcast telling me to \”run meetings like a Navy SEAL\” or whatever.

Then, digging through the wreckage of yet another unproductive planning session, I stumbled across something called the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). Skeptical, obviously. Another management framework? Probably just more buzzwords. But buried within it was this concept: the Level 10 Meeting™. The promise? Get your team meeting pulse to a consistent \”10\” out of 10. My immediate reaction was a snort. \”Sure, Jan.\” But desperation breeds open-mindedness, or maybe just resignation. I figured, what\’s the worst that could happen? More wasted time? We were already experts at that.

So, I dove in. Read the book (Traction by Gino Wickman, for the curious). The core idea wasn\’t revolutionary, but its rigidity was the point. A strict 90-minute weekly agenda, segmented into bite-sized chunks: a quick check-in (how\’s everyone really?), reviewing last week\’s metrics and rocks (big priorities), tackling issues in a structured way (no rambling!), and crystal-clear to-dos with owners and deadlines. No fluff. No tangents. Just laser focus. It felt… clinical. Almost too simple. Could sticking to a script really fix our messy human interactions?

Implementing it was… awkward. Like wearing stiff new shoes. The first week, forcing everyone to rate the meeting at the end felt cringey. \”Uh, seven? I guess?\” Getting used to the \”Issues List\” instead of diving headfirst into the first problem someone shouted out took discipline. Cutting someone off mid-rant because their point wasn\’t the priority issue felt rude. Old habits die hard. There were eye rolls. Mine included. That initial template felt like a straitjacket. \”90 minutes? We need at least two hours for this mess!\” But we stuck with it. Mostly because I was too stubborn to admit defeat.

Here\’s the weird part, though. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, things started… shifting. That forced rating? It stopped being awkward and started being data. Seeing a string of \”5s\” was a kick in the teeth, forcing us to ask why it sucked. The structured issue solving (Identify, Discuss, Solve – IDS) stopped tangents dead. If it wasn\’t the critical issue right now, it went on the list for later. The magic wasn\’t in the template itself, but in the brutal honesty it demanded. No hiding. No waffling. Just \”Here\’s the problem. Let\’s solve it. Who owns fixing it? By when?\” Done. Move on.

Don\’t get me wrong. It\’s not a magic wand. We still have messy weeks. Someone still tries to hijack the agenda with their pet project. Metrics sometimes look grim. The \”rocks\” (our quarterly priorities) sometimes feel like boulders we’re barely chipping at. And filling out that damn scorecard feels like homework sometimes. I still get tired. The framework doesn\’t eliminate problems; it just gives you a slightly less chaotic battlefield to fight them on. It creates traction – that gritty, incremental forward movement you can actually feel. Knowing exactly what everyone is focused on, seeing those weekly action items actually get done… it chips away at the helplessness.

Look, I’m not here to sell you EOS or tell you this is The One True Way™. Frankly, I still find some of the terminology a bit culty. But the core structure? The ruthless focus on the same few priorities week after week? The discipline of accountability? That part works. It works because it counteracts our natural human tendency towards chaos and distraction. It’s a scaffold, holding up the weight of our collective intentions so they don’t just collapse into noise.

So, after wrestling with this beast, customizing it, fighting it, and finally, begrudgingly, appreciating it, I built our own version of the Level 10 Meeting template. Stripped it down to the absolute essentials that worked for us. No fancy software required, just a Google Doc. It’s not perfect. It’s a workhorse, not a show pony. It’s got the scars of our real-world use – the slightly aggressive conditional formatting that turns action items red when they’re overdue (a necessary evil), the painfully simple metrics tracker, the dedicated space for that ever-growing Issues List we ruthlessly prioritize.

Why share it? Honestly? Because I remember that drowning feeling. That \”surely there must be a better way\” desperation. If sharing this clunky, battle-tested template saves one other team from the soul-sucking vortex of pointless meetings, then my minor effort feels worth it. Consider it a life raft tossed from one weary meeting survivor to another. Take it. Tear it apart. Make it yours. Just… maybe give the structure a real shot for a month. Be stubborn about it, like I was. The first few weeks will feel weird. Push through.

The reality check: This template won\’t make your team suddenly love meetings (impossible). It won\’t solve deep cultural dysfunction overnight. It won\’t magically make all your problems vanish. What it will do is give you a fighting chance. It’ll force clarity. It’ll expose bottlenecks. It’ll make it glaringly obvious who’s accountable for what. And that, in my weary, slightly cynical, but ultimately hopeful experience, is the foundation you actually build progress on. Slow, gritty, real progress. Not the fake \”busy\” kind.

Download it below. Use it. Hate it for a few weeks. Then maybe, just maybe, you’ll start to feel that slight, satisfying crunch of traction beneath your feet. Good luck. You\’ll need it. (We all do).

[Download Link: Your_Traction_Level10_Meeting_Template_v2.3.docx]

【FAQ】

Q: Okay, this sounds rigid. Won\’t it kill creativity and spontaneous discussion?

A> Honestly? My initial fear too. Felt like putting creativity in a cage. The reality surprised me. Yeah, it kills the destructive spontaneity – the \”Ooh, shiny new problem!\” derailments that ate half our meetings. What it doesn\’t kill is deep discussion on the actual priority issue. By containing it within the IDS structure (Identify, Discuss, Solve), we actually dive deeper into solving the right problem instead of skimming ten. And guess what? Knowing the meeting will end on time actually frees up mental space outside the meeting for those creative rabbit holes. We just capture them on the Issues List for prioritization later. Less chaos, more focused creativity.

Q: This seems like a lot of admin work! Filling scorecards, updating the doc… Isn\’t this just adding more overhead?

A> Ugh, yeah. The admin. Look, I won\’t sugarcoat it. There\’s a setup cost and weekly upkeep. It is extra work initially. But here\’s the trade-off I\’ve lived: The 15-20 minutes prepping the agenda doc SAVES us the 30-45 minutes we used to waste in the meeting figuring out what we were even talking about, or chasing down last week\’s forgotten action items. It forces discipline before the meeting. The scorecard? It\’s literally 5 minutes at the start and 2 minutes at the end. The pain of the admin is real, but the pain of chronic disorganization and wasted hours is far, far worse. It\’s a net time saver, but you gotta push through the initial friction.

Q: My team is resistant to change / skeptical of \”flavor of the month\” systems. How do I get buy-in?

A> Been there, got the t-shirt (and the eye-rolls). Don\’t sell it as a miracle cure. Frame it as an experiment: \”Look, meetings suck for all of us. I found this structured approach. Let\’s try it exactly as is for just 4 weeks. No modifications. At the end, we vote. If it doesn\’t improve things, we scrap it. Deal?\” Enforcing the full trial period is crucial – it takes time to get past the awkwardness. Track the meeting ratings! Seeing the numbers climb (even slowly) is powerful evidence. And be the strictest enforcer of the rules yourself. Your commitment (or lack thereof) is contagious.

Q: Is 90 minutes really enough? Our weekly sync usually runs 2+ hours easily!

A> That was our biggest skepticism too. \”Impossible!\” we cried. The brutal truth? The 90-minute limit is why it works. It forces ruthless prioritization. You physically cannot tackle everything. You have to identify the single most important issue to solve this week. Everything else goes on the list. It cuts the fluff, the nice-to-haves, the distractions. You\’d be shocked how much \”essential\” discussion was actually just noise when faced with a hard stop. The first few weeks you might bleed over slightly, but stick to the timebox. It trains discipline like nothing else. Now, 90 minutes feels ample for the real work.

Q: Can we modify the template? Some sections feel irrelevant to us.

A> Absolutely. Tear it apart! This template is a starting point, forged in our specific fires. The core segments (Check-in, Scorecard, Rocks, Issues List, To-dos) are the non-negotiables for the structure to work. But the specifics within those? Customize the hell out of it. Change the metrics you track. Rename \”Rocks\” to \”Big Bets\” if that resonates better. Adapt the Issues List format. Make it your team\’s own. The power is in the consistent rhythm and discipline, not the specific labels. Just don\’t gut the core process itself until you\’ve really given it a fair shot.