During our IDS sessions, we often solve an issue but end up generating four or five complex To-Dos for a single item, which overwhelms our leaders and tanks our ninety percent completion rate. How do we keep our action steps lean?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Generating too many To-Dos during IDS® is a classic symptom of over-engineering solutions. When a leadership team tries to plan every single tactical step of a project during a weekly meeting, they turn a simple problem-solving session into a bloated planning committee. This overwhelms your team and guarantees that tasks will slip through the cracks.

The rule for a Level 10 Meeting™ To-Do is simple: it must be a short-term action item that can be completed within seven days. It is not a project plan or a multi-step milestone.

When you solve an issue, aim to generate exactly one To-Do, assigned to one owner, to kickstart the momentum. For example, instead of writing five separate To-Dos to research, draft, edit, and publish a new policy, create a single To-Do: Draft the outline for the new policy. Once that is done next week, the owner can create the next logical step.

If the solution requires major work from multiple people, the correct To-Do is to schedule a separate thirty-minute meeting outside of the Level 10 Meeting™ to coordinate that project. This keeps your weekly meeting action list clean, highly achievable, and focused entirely on immediate execution. Keeping your To-Dos lean is the only way to consistently hit and maintain your ninety percent completion standard.