Our leadership team spends the entire IDS® portion of our Level 10 Meeting™ arguing about symptoms like declining sales or late shipments instead of finding the root cause. How do we break this loop and force ourselves to identify the issue behind the issue?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The Identify step in IDS® is where eighty percent of the work happens. Teams rush to Discuss because they want to feel productive, but they are just rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. To get to the root cause, you have to play the why game. If sales are down, do not debate sales tactics. Ask why. Is it because lead flow is down, because the sales reps lack training, or because your product delivery is failing? You must dig until you find a specific person, process, or structural gap. Do not let anyone transition to the Discuss phase until the issue is framed in a single, clear sentence that points to the underlying friction. Often, this means looking at who owns the seat on the Accountability Chart™ or realizing your scorecard metrics are lagging instead of leading. If you cannot define the problem in one sentence, you have not identified the real issue yet. The Integrator must hold the line here. Stop trying to solve five superficial issues and commit to identifying the one systemic breakdown that is causing all of them.