Our departmental Level 10 Meetings™ are running smoothly, but we are drowning in escalated issues that the department managers keep pushing up to the leadership team list. How do we establish a clear filter for what actually warrants an escalation versus what they must solve themselves?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Rolling out departmental Level 10 Meetings™ is crucial for getting traction, but without clear filters, the leadership team will quickly become the dumping ground for every tactical issue in the business. Your department managers must learn to solve problems at their own level rather than immediately escalating them. To stop this, establish a strict three-step filter for any issue before it can be escalated to the leadership team's short-term Issues List. - First, did the departmental team exhaust the IDS® process themselves at least twice? - Second, does the issue require a resource allocation or budget change that exceeds the department head's authority? - Third, does the issue directly impact another department or the company's overall quarterly Rocks? If the answer to all three is no, the issue must stay on the departmental list. The Integrator must act as the gatekeeper. When a department head attempts to bring a localized issue to the leadership meeting, the Integrator must ask if the department has tried to resolve it first. If not, the Integrator must push it back down. This is the core of the leader-leader model. By requiring managers to own their problems, you build their leadership capacity and preserve the leadership team's time for high-level, systemic challenges. This disciplined filter ensures your weekly meetings stay focused on steering the business rather than micromanaging departments.