The weekly business review (WBR)

The Weekly Business Review, also called the L10, the staff meeting, the WBR, is the heartbeat of a running business. 60-90 minutes a week. Same agenda. Same people. Non-negotiable. Every operator I respect runs one.

Why weekly

Monthly is too slow, problems compound for 30 days before they surface. Daily is too frequent, not enough changes day-to-day to warrant leadership time. Weekly is the right cadence: problems surface within a week, get addressed, status changes tracked.

The canonical agenda (EOS/L10 format, use it)

• Segue (5 min), quick personal + professional bests
• Scorecard review (5 min), read the numbers, flag off-track
• Rock review (5 min), quarterly priorities status: on track / off track
• Customer/employee headlines (5 min), meaningful wins + issues
• To-do list review (5 min), previous week's to-dos complete/not
• IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) (60 min), the issue list, worked through one at a time
• Conclude (5 min), recap, ratings, close

Total: 90 min. Hard stop.

The issue list

The main work happens here. Throughout the week, anyone adds items to a shared issue list. In the meeting, the group picks the most important one, works through Identify → Discuss → Solve, then the next.

• Identify: what's the real problem? (Often 5 minutes of clarification reveals the issue is different than first stated.)
• Discuss: short. Don't re-litigate.
• Solve: a to-do assigned to one person with a deadline. Or a decision made and documented.

Rules that keep it tight

• Start on time. End on time. Same day and hour every week.
• Same people every week. Substitutes break the rhythm.
• No status updates. Status goes in a written doc before the meeting. Meeting time is for issues, not reports.
• To-dos are owned by one person with a date. "The team will look into it" = no one is doing it.
• If an issue takes more than 10 min, it's probably a separate working session.

Anti-patterns

• Meeting canceled "because we're busy", you're busy because meetings get canceled
• Status updates that no one reads beforehand
• Issue list that grows but never shrinks
• To-dos that roll over week after week (accountability break)
• Side conversations that swallow the agenda

The discipline of the pre-read

Amazon's famous version: 6-page memo, read silently for the first 15-20 minutes of the meeting. Everyone starts with full context. No "what's the status?" questions. The rest of the meeting is discussion.

Worth emulating for monthly and quarterly reviews. For weekly, a shorter pre-read (dashboard + scorecard) is usually enough.

When the WBR is working

Signs of a functioning WBR:

• Issues get resolved, not just discussed
• The issue list oscillates, doesn't only grow
• Scorecard metrics trend up over months
• Same problems don't reappear
• Team attendance is voluntary + high

When it's broken

• Meeting is dominated by one person (usually the founder)
• Issues are discussed forever, decided never
• To-dos complete rate under 70%
• People bring personal grievances disguised as "issues"
• Meeting is canceled more than twice per quarter

Scaling the WBR

Each team/department should run its own L10. The exec team runs an L10 above those. Issues that can't be solved at team-level roll up. Prevents the founder's calendar from becoming everyone's issue list.