Our team wastes valuable time debating which issues to tackle or simply cherry-picks easy, low-impact administrative tasks from the top of the list instead of tackling our most critical business problems. How should a team strictly prioritize and attack the Issues List every single week?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Cherry-picking easy items from the Issues List is a natural human tendency. Leaders instinctively gravitate toward low-stakes, transactional tasks because they feel productive to cross off, leaving the difficult, uncomfortable bottlenecks to fester for months.

To eliminate this waste, you must enforce the EOS prioritization rule before discussing a single issue. The team must identify the top three issues on the list. Not five, not ten. Exactly three.

The facilitator looks at the board and asks: "Looking at this list, what is our number one issue?" Team members advocate for what truly moves the business forward or what represents the biggest threat. Once the team agrees on number one, the facilitator asks for number two, and then number three.

Once your top three are set, begin immediately on issue number one. You do not touch issue number two until number one has been identified to root cause, discussed, and solved with an actionable To-Do. If you spend the entire sixty minutes of IDS on issue number one, the meeting was an unqualified success because you dismantled your company's greatest obstacle.

Never work top-to-bottom down the list in chronological order. Never allow someone to sneak in a pet project just because it is fast. Prioritize by business impact, attack number one first, and let the small issues wait.