During our weekly Level 10 Meeting™, we waste twenty minutes just explaining the background of the issues on the list before we even select our top three to IDS®. How do we stop this context-setting waste and get straight to prioritizing and solving?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Long-winded background explanations are a major source of meeting waste. This happens when leaders do not trust the team to understand the problem, or when they are trying to pre-sell their preferred solution before the issue is even prioritized. It kills the momentum of the weekly pulse.

To fix this, you must enforce a strict no talking during prioritization rule. When you review the Issues List to identify the top three, you are only selecting which problems to solve first. You are not discussing them, explaining them, or defending why they are important.

The facilitator must step in the moment someone starts telling a story during the prioritization phase. The only acceptable words during this part of the meeting are the numbers of the issues being nominated. For example, a leader should say, I vote for issues four, seven, and twelve.

Once the top three are selected and you officially enter the Identify phase of IDS®, the owner of the issue gets exactly one sentence to state the core problem. If they cannot state the issue in one clear sentence, they do not understand the problem well enough yet. Keep the focus on what is broken, not the historical narrative of how it broke. Only after the issue is clearly identified can the team move to discussion. This discipline will immediately reclaim twenty minutes of wasted time.