We cascaded the Level 10 Meeting™ to our departmental teams, but now our middle managers are complaining that they do not have enough unique department-level issues to solve and the meetings feel repetitive. How do we help departmental teams build a high-value Issues List that actually drives local traction?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When departmental Level 10 Meetings feel dry or repetitive, it is usually because the team is not identifying real, ground-level problems. They are likely waiting for the leadership team to hand down issues, or they are hiding their own challenges out of fear.

To fix this, middle managers must change how they look for issues. They should pull directly from their weekly Scorecard and their quarterly Rocks. Every single off-track metric or delayed Rock is an issue that must be dropped to the list automatically.

Additionally, managers can prompt their teams with specific, targeted questions during the week to populate the list before the meeting starts. They can ask:
- What is slowing down our daily workflow right now?
- Where are we seeing friction with other departments?
- What customer complaints did we receive this week?
- What tools or training is the team lacking to do their jobs?

Another common problem is that departmental teams do not feel empowered to solve their own issues. They think every decision needs leadership approval. Encourage them to use the IDS process to find local solutions. They should only escalate an issue to the leadership team if it requires a budget increase, changes company policy, or affects another department's seat on the Accountability Chart. Empowering them to solve their own problems will make the meetings highly engaging.