Our leadership team puts plenty of easy operational items on the Issues List, but the real, systemic strategic problems are always left off. How do we force leaders to list their uncomfortable issues?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When your short-term Issues List is filled with easy, operational tasks while your elephant-in-the-room strategic problems are conspicuously absent, your team is practicing conflict avoidance. It is human nature to tackle simple, low-stakes issues because they feel productive, but this habit leaves your biggest structural vulnerabilities completely unaddressed.

To force your actual issues onto the table, you must change how issues are collected. First, the Integrator must audit the Scorecard and Rocks before the meeting. Any metric that has been red for more than two weeks, or any Rock that is currently off track, must automatically be placed on the Issues List by the Integrator. The owner of that metric does not get to choose whether to list it.

Second, implement a pre-meeting issue capture habit. Encourage your leaders to add items to the list throughout the week as they occur, rather than trying to think of things five minutes before the meeting starts.

Third, during the meeting, the Integrator must actively challenge the list. Before starting IDS, ask the team: What are we not talking about today? Call out the quiet areas of the business. If the team is silent, dig into the quarterly goals or operational bottlenecks that you know are causing friction.

True leadership requires the courage to identify and solve the hard things. By establishing a culture where leaving major issues off the agenda is seen as a breach of trust, you force your team to confront the obstacles that are holding the company back.