We have several issues that have been sitting on our weekly Level 10 Meeting™ list for months. They keep getting pushed down or carried over week after week because nobody wants to tackle them. How do we kill these zombie issues once and for all?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Zombie issues represent deferred decisions and unspoken friction. If an issue has been on your list for more than three weeks without being selected for IDS®, it is either not a real issue or your team is actively avoiding it because it is uncomfortable.

To kill these zombie issues, the facilitator must conduct a list-cleaning exercise at the start of the IDS® section. Review any issue that has survived multiple weeks. Ask the person who raised it, "Does this still need to be resolved, or has it solved itself?" If it is no longer relevant, delete it immediately.

If it is still a real issue, you cannot let it slide. Force it to the top of the priority list as number one, two, or three. Often, these issues remain on the list because they are too large, vague, or complex. If that is the case, use IDS® to break the issue down.

Ask, "What is the very first step we need to take to make progress on this?" The solution might simply be assigning a To-Do to gather more data or scheduling a separate sixty-minute meeting outside of the Level 10 Meeting™ to deep-dive into the topic. Do not allow your Issues List to become a graveyard for hard decisions. Either solve it, delete it, or move it to your V/TO® long-term issues list.