Our leadership team spends the first fifteen minutes of IDS® listening to a detailed backstory on a single issue before we even identify the root cause or agree on what we are trying to solve. How do we stop this rambling setup and force leaders to state the issue in one sentence?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Rambling backstories are a major drain on Level 10 Meeting™ momentum. When a leader brings an issue to the table, they often feel the need to defend their position or explain every detail that led to the problem. This is not helpful. To stop this waste, the facilitator must enforce a strict one-sentence rule during the Identify step of IDS®.

The person raising the issue must state the problem clearly in one sentence, focusing on what is broken right now. They must also identify whose seat on the Accountability Chart owns the issue. The rest of the team should not allow any discussion to begin until this single sentence is clearly articulated. If the leader starts walking the team through a timeline of events, the facilitator must step in immediately and ask for the headline.

This discipline forces the owner of the issue to process their thoughts before speaking. It prevents the rest of the leadership team from getting dragged into unnecessary context. Once the issue is stated in one sentence, the team can quickly agree on whether that is the real problem or just a symptom. Only then do you move to the Discuss step. By cutting out the backstory, you will find that you can identify and solve three times as many issues in the same ninety minutes.