How to Have an EOS Compatible Meeting [+Free Agenda Template]

Looking to implement EOS® compatible meetings at your organization? You’re in the right place. EOS® compatible meetings bring issues and challenges to light so they can be prioritized, discussed, and overcome.

This meeting model uses strict time blocks and demands preparation from attendees. When done right, it launches companies toward their goals.

To effectively use an EOS® compatible meeting agenda template, you’ll need to understand the concepts behind the meeting model. Let’s begin with the basics.‍

Why is it called an ‘EOS® compatible’ meeting?

The EOS® compatible meeting was introduced by the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS. EOS is a management framework designed to help business leaders execute strategies and meet goals.

Of the many things that make an EOS® compatible meeting unique is the final agenda item. Attendees are asked at the end of the meeting to rate the meeting on a scale of 1 to 10. A perfectly run meeting would score a 10. This feedback is critical to improving future meetings.

By rating each meeting from 1-10, you identify under-performing meetings and start to understand why.

The EOS® compatible meeting gets its name from the pursuit of always having meetings that are a 'ten.'

Who attends an EOS® compatible meeting?

According to EOS, these meetings are only for senior leadership. The purpose of a EOS® compatible meeting is to get the leadership team together once a week every Monday morning to spend 90 minutes prioritizing and addressing hurdles.

The EOS approach to management focuses on six areas:

• Vision
• People
• Data
• Process
• Issues
• Traction
  

In an EOS® compatible meeting, these priorities shape what an organization’s leaders focus on.

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What happens in an EOS® compatible meeting?

An EOS® compatible meeting has seven sections:

1. Segue

Also called “Check In”, this is the portion of the meeting where the facilitator kicks things off. On some templates, this is called “Good News.” That’s because EOS says these meetings should start on a positive note. Attendees can share personal or professional wins, exciting realizations or developments, or anything they’d like the other attendees to celebrate with them.

2. Scorecard

After segueing into meeting mode, each attendee shares 1-5 of their most important KPIs or metrics. There’s only five minutes allotted for this, so it should happen rather quickly and isn’t open for discussion. If any metrics indicate an issue, the meeting note-taker should start an “issues list” and write them down.

3. Rock Review

In EOS® compatible meetings, a “rock” is a project that will take at least 90 days of work to execute. In this portion of the meeting, attendees briefly discuss whether their rocks are on track or not. The meeting note-taker adds any which are off track to the issues list rather than discussing them. Rock Review should only take five minutes.

4. Customer/Employee Headlines

Like the scorecard and rock review sections, this meeting item moves quickly. It is focused on customer and employee feedback. The idea is for each member of the leadership team to share a one-sentence summary of employee and/or customer sentiment. Once again, there is no discussion, but issues are added to the list.

5. To-do List

This final five-minute portion before diving into solutions asks each attendee to report on their previous week’s to-do list. They share whether items on it are complete, incomplete, or in progress. As with the other meeting items leading up to this one, issues are written down but not discussed.

6. IDS

IDS stands for Identify, Discuss, and Solve. This will take up the majority of meeting time. The EOS® compatible meeting agenda dedicates 60 minutes to the tasks of identifying the top three priorities on the issues list (by attendee vote), discussing those three issues to identify the roots of the problems, and creating new to-do’s that solve them within a week. If an issue reappears on the top three priority list many weeks in a row, it can be designated as a quarterly discussion topic.

7. Conclude

Wrapping up the meeting should only take five minutes. However, it does have three components:

• Recapping the To-Do List
• Cascading Messages
• Rating

This means that in just five minutes, attendees should ensure that each new to-do item is assigned to a person and that assignees feel they can accomplish their to-do’s in a week.

The leadership team also needs to assign someone to communicate to other levels of the organization affected by decisions made in the EOS® compatible Meeting.

Finally, attendees rate the meeting on a scale of 1-10. A low rating means the team needs to discuss how to better hold these meetings.

EOS® Compatible Meeting Template

This meeting agenda template is available as a Google Doc, Word Doc, or for use in Hugo (meeting management software).

Using EOS® Compatible Meetings to Level Up Your Business

EOS® compatible meetings clearly require a bit of preparation and firm facilitation to stay on task and on time. However, the benefits of hyper-focusing on challenges and solutions are undeniable. Many businesses which use EOS and EOS® compatible meetings find that they quickly scale thanks to their rapid approach to identifying and resolving issues.

The EOS® compatible meeting structure can also positively affect other meetings outside of the leadership team. Whether you’re looking to apply the method to your weekly senior meetings or to another part of your organization, you can use our free agenda template to get started.