Our weekly Issues List is growing to thirty or forty items, and many of them have been sitting there for months because they never get prioritized for IDS. How do we clean up this backlog without losing track of important operational issues?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A healthy weekly Issues List is dynamic, but over time, it is common for the list to grow to thirty or forty items. Many of these issues sit at the bottom of the list for weeks because they never get prioritized for IDS® during your ninety-minute meeting pulse. This backlog causes visual clutter and mental fatigue for the team.

To clean up this backlog without losing important issues, you must implement a strict curation process. First, enforce a rule that any issue that has sat on the list for more than three weeks without being selected for IDS® must be moved to the long-term Issues List on your V/TO®. The weekly Level 10 Meeting™ is for short-term operational issues that must be solved now. If an issue can wait three weeks, it is not an immediate priority.

Second, combine similar issues. Often, multiple team members will add different angles of the same underlying challenge. Group them together before the meeting starts so you can solve the root cause once.

Third, empower owners to solve minor issues outside the meeting. Not every problem requires the entire leadership team to weigh in. If an issue only affects two departments, those leaders should take a to-do to meet offline and resolve it, rather than taking up collective IDS® time. This keeps your weekly list lean, focused, and actionable.