Our leadership team's Level 10 Meeting™ Issues List has a subset of stale issues that have sat untouched for over six weeks because they are too complex to solve in a single meeting, yet we keep copying them over week after week. How do we clean up these stagnant issues and prevent them from clogging our weekly momentum?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Stale issues that linger on your list for weeks are a symptom of a deeper problem. Usually, these issues are actually quarterly Rocks in disguise, or they are too vaguely defined for the team to take action.

To clean up this clutter, the facilitator must conduct a regular purge of the Issues List. If an issue has sat on the list for more than four weeks without being selected for IDS, ask the owner of that issue two questions: is this truly an issue we must solve now, and is it defined clearly.

If the issue is not urgent, delete it from the weekly list and archive it on your V/TO under long term issues. This keeps your weekly list focused only on the most critical operational problems.

If the issue is urgent but too complex to solve in a ninety minute meeting, it is likely a project. In this case, the team must break it down during IDS. Do not try to solve the whole thing at once. Instead, create a specific, small, actionable To Do for the coming week that moves the issue forward. For example, assign a leader to gather data or draft a proposal.

By breaking massive, intimidating issues into weekly actionable steps, you restore momentum and keep your weekly Level 10 Meeting from becoming a graveyard of unsolved problems.