Now that we have rolled out departmental Level 10 Meetings™, we notice that departments are solving their own issues but creating secondary problems for other teams without their knowledge. How do we create a clean information flow between departmental meetings?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When you cascade the Level 10 Meeting™ down to your departmental teams, you risk creating operational silos. If the customer service team changes a process during their IDS® session to make their lives easier, they might accidentally create a massive headache for the finance or sales team. Solving issues in a vacuum is not true traction.

To fix this, you must master the art of the cascade and the escalate. There are two primary mechanisms to keep your organization aligned without adding more meetings.

First, utilize the concluding section of every departmental Level 10 Meeting™ called Cascade Messages. During the last five minutes of the meeting, the team must ask: What did we decide or solve today that other teams need to know? If an issue or solution impacts another department, the team must assign a To-Do to their manager to communicate that decision directly to the impacted department head or bring it to the leadership team meeting.

Second, use your Accountability Chart™ pathways. If a departmental team identifies an issue that they cannot solve on their own, or if the solution requires cross-departmental agreement, they must escalate the issue up to the leadership team's Issues List. The department manager is the bridge. They own the responsibility of bringing the issue to the leadership team's Level 10 Meeting™ for a holistic IDS® session.

By enforcing these two protocols, you ensure that local solutions do not create global problems. Information flows cleanly up and down the organizational structure, keeping everyone aligned.