When a key leadership team member is out of the office, we struggle with what to do with their issues during IDS®. Do we go ahead and solve them in their absence, or do we table everything, creating a massive bottleneck on next week's agenda?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Operating a business on EOS® means the organization must be able to run without any single individual, including during the weekly Level 10 Meeting™. If you table every issue belonging to an absent leader, you stall company momentum and allow operational bottlenecks to pile up.

The rule for running a Level 10 Meeting™ when a leader is absent is simple: the meeting goes on, and you solve what you can. Before the meeting starts, the absent leader must review the Issues List and provide brief notes or context on their critical items, or delegate authority to another team member to speak on their behalf.

During IDS®, if an issue involving the absent leader is critical and cannot wait, the remaining team members must discuss it and make the best decision possible with the information they have. They can then assign a To-Do to the absent leader to review the decision and execute the next steps upon their return. If an issue genuinely requires their presence for a nuanced debate, only then do you table it. However, this should be the exception, not the rule. Maintaining the same day, same time pulse requires a commitment to keeping the business moving forward, regardless of who is out of the office.