We have several long-standing issues on our weekly Level 10 Meeting list that have been sitting there for three months without ever being selected for IDS, yet the team refuses to remove them. How do we clear this chronic backlog of zombie issues so our team can focus on what actually matters right now?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A massive buildup of old, stagnant issues on your weekly agenda is a major drag on team focus. When the same items sit on your issues list week after week, they clutter your view and dilute the urgency of your truly critical problems. This backlog usually happens because the team is afraid to let go of low-priority ideas. To clear this clutter, the facilitator must conduct a regular purge of the issues list. Every four to six weeks, look at any issue that has survived on the board for more than three weeks without being selected for IDS®. For each of these items, ask the owner of the issue to choose one of three actions: keep, kill, or close. If the issue is still a genuine, high-priority problem that must be solved, keep it on the list, but make a commitment to prioritize it next week. If the issue has solved itself or is no longer relevant, kill it immediately. If the issue is important but not urgent enough to solve in the next few weeks, close it by moving it to the long-term issues list on your V/TO®. The long-term issues list on your V/TO® is the proper storage place for these items. Keeping them there ensures they are preserved for your next Quarterly Collaborative or Annual Planning session, leaving your weekly Level 10 Meeting™ agenda clean, focused, and limited to issues that require immediate action.