Our departmental Level 10 Meetings™ are running, but we have no structured way of cascading issues up to the leadership team or pushing leadership decisions down to the departments without creating massive communication delays. How do we establish a seamless issue-routing process between these different meeting pulses?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To keep your meeting pulse aligned, you must implement a clear escalation and delegation protocol. The flow of issues between your departmental Level 10 Meetings and your leadership team meetings must be a two way street, governed by the Accountability Chart.

When a department identifies an issue they cannot solve because it requires additional budget, crosses department lines, or impacts company strategy, the department head must own it. That department head brings the issue up to the leadership Level 10 Meeting. They do not just dump it on the list; they frame it as an escalation from their department.

Conversely, when the leadership team makes a decision that impacts operations, it must cascade down. This happens in the wrap up section of the leadership Level 10 Meeting under the heading of cascade messages. The leadership team decides exactly what needs to be communicated. Each department head then takes those messages and drops them onto their respective departmental Issues Lists to ensure the message is delivered and processed.

Keep the barrier high. Departmental teams must try to solve their own issues first. If a department head brings an issue to the leadership table, they must be prepared to state what they already tried and why it failed. This maintains the integrity of each meeting pulse and stops the leadership team from doing the work of the departments.