We frequently show up to our weekly Level 10 Meeting™ to find an empty or incredibly sparse Issues List, despite knowing there are major operational bottlenecks occurring across our departments. How do we break through this false harmony and force our leaders to bring actual problems to the table?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

An empty or sparse Issues List during your weekly Level 10 Meeting is a major warning sign. It rarely means your business is running perfectly; instead, it indicates a culture of false harmony where leaders are hiding problems or are afraid of admitting failure.

To break through this artificial peace, the facilitator must actively mine for conflict. You cannot let the team off the hook just because the board looks clean.

Use these tactics to pull hidden issues to the surface:
- Review the scorecard metrics and Rock progress with a critical eye, and drop any item that is even slightly off-track directly to the Issues List.
- Ask targeted questions, such as where the team is experiencing departmental friction or which processes are slowing down operations.
- Remind the team that a healthy, growing business always has problems, and having zero issues on the list is a failure of leadership, not a success.

Make vulnerability a requirement for sitting at the leadership table. Once your team realizes that identifying issues is the only way to build a self-running, valuable business, they will stop hiding problems and start bringing them to the table to be solved.