Lean
Level 1. Scores 0 to 25. Your team meets less than the reference. Is anything decided?
Your leadership team spends less time in recurring meetings than the reference rhythm. Once the benchmark publishes you will see where this sits. Before you take that as a win, look at the cost per decision figure. Lean is good when the decisions are still getting made. It is a problem when the rhythm is thin because the team has stopped deciding together and started deciding in corridors, in one to ones with the CEO, or not at all.
The tell is the decision count. If you entered decisions per meeting and the total is low, the meetings are cheap because nothing happens in them, and the real decision making has moved somewhere the calculator cannot see, usually to the leader's calendar. That shows up as a leader with a Stretched or Overrun span score and a leadership team that meets for forty minutes a week.
The second tell is the quarterly. Lean teams often have a good weekly and no quarterly, which means the strategic decisions are made in the weekly, in ninety minutes, next to the operational ones. That is not lean. That is a strategy meeting that never happens.
My minimum is two meetings, and neither is optional. A weekly, where the leadership team talks to each other rather than reporting to me. And a quarterly, where the team agrees the one to three priorities that matter and lets the rest go. Everything else in a rhythm is useful. Those two are structural.
A team that meets less than that does not save time. It moves the traffic. Without the weekly, every piece of information routes up through the CEO and back down again, and the CEO becomes the switchboard for their own company. Without the quarterly, the weekly fills up with strategy it has no time to decide. The meetings you cut come back as interruptions, one person at a time.
What to do with this: nothing to cut. Check what you are missing. If there is no quarterly with a full day and a decision list, add one and cost it here; it will be the most expensive meeting on the page and the only one that pays for itself.
Next step: the rhythm diagnostic tells you whether the meetings you do have are doing their job. Take the Meeting and Rhythm diagnostic.
Next step
The other results
- WorkingYour rhythm is near the reference. Now ask what each is for.
- HeavyYour team meets well over the reference. Shortening will not fix it.
- Meeting BoundYour team has replaced deciding with meeting.
About this result
This is one of 4 results from the Leadership Team Meeting Cost Calculator, a free tool that shows the score without an email. Aggregate figures are at the statistics page once 30 completions have been reached. More free tools are at the tools shelf.