Now that our sales and operations departments run their own Level 10 Meetings, operational roadblocks keep getting stuck at the departmental level instead of surfacing to the leadership team. How do we cleanly escalate issues from departmental L10s up to the leadership team without encouraging middle managers to dump all their problems on us?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Departmental Level 10 Meetings fail when there is no clear filter for what must be solved locally versus what must be escalated. Without clear boundaries, middle managers either hide critical bottlenecks until they become emergencies, or they punt every uncomfortable decision up to the leadership team.

To establish a clean escalation protocol, establish three objective criteria. A departmental issue may only be escalated to the leadership team Level 10 Meeting if it meets at least one of these conditions:

- It directly impacts or threatens a company-level Scorecard measurable or a company Rock.
- It requires an unbudgeted financial expenditure or resource allocation beyond the department head's approved spending limit.
- It requires structural cross-departmental policy changes that the two department heads cannot resolve between themselves after attempting IDS.

When an issue meets these criteria, the department head owns carrying it to the leadership team Issues List. They must frame it with precision: state the issue, state what their team already attempted, and define the specific decision needed from the leadership team.

If a middle manager brings an issue that fails to meet these criteria, the Integrator must immediately push it back down. Ask: What have you and your team decided to do about this? Forcing departments to exhaust their own problem-solving capabilities builds leadership muscle and keeps your executive Issues List focused strictly on company-wide priorities.