Our Integrator does a decent job keeping us on time, but during the sixty-minute IDS® portion of our Level 10 Meeting™, we constantly slide from the main issue into side tangents and history lessons. How do we stop this agenda drift and keep our problem-solving highly focused?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Agenda drift happens when your team focuses on symptoms and stories rather than the root cause. When an issue is raised, the person who listed it must state the problem in one short sentence. This is the Identify phase of IDS®.

Your facilitator must actively police the discussion. If a team member begins sharing historical context or pointing fingers, the facilitator must interrupt and ask how that information helps solve the core issue today. The rest of the team must also use the term tangent killer to call out drift when they see it.

Keep the focus on creating a clear, weekly To-Do that solves the issue. If a discussion drifts into another department's internal operations, table that subset of the issue immediately. You must resolve the primary problem first.

Your leadership team must commit to the Same Page pillar of your organizational charter. This means agreeing to a healthy, structured plan and respecting the facilitator's authority to keep the meeting moving. If a tangent is truly important, drop it to the bottom of the Issues List as a separate item rather than solving it on the fly.