Our weekly Issues List is always packed with minor, high-frequency operational issues that should be handled offline, leaving us with zero time to solve the systemic problems that are holding our business back. How do we filter out these distractions before our Level 10 Meeting starts?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If your weekly Issues List is clogged with minor, transactional problems, your leadership team is using the Level 10 Meeting™ as an expensive clearinghouse for daily tasks. This is a failure of leadership and a sign of poor delegation. Your ninety-minute weekly pulse must be reserved for systemic issues that impact the company's overall health and ability to hit its V/TO®.

To clean up your list, implement a strict filtering rule: if an issue can be resolved in five minutes by two leaders talking offline, it has no business being on the leadership team's Issues List.

Instruct your team to ask themselves three questions before adding an item:

- Does this issue affect multiple departments or the entire company?
- Have the individuals directly involved tried to solve this offline first?
- Is this a recurring systemic problem rather than a one-time transactional mistake?

If the answer to these questions is no, they must solve it outside of the meeting.

During the meeting, if the facilitator notices a minor issue has slipped through, they must table it immediately. Instruct the relevant leaders to take it offline and resolve it after the meeting. Over time, this discipline will train your team to self-solve minor issues, keeping your weekly IDS® focused on the heavy, high-impact problems that actually move the business forward.