During our Level 10 Meetings, our leadership team tends to rush through IDS by agreeing to quick tactical Band-Aids just to clear items off the board, only for the same core problem to return weeks later. How do we force the team to identify the true root cause before jumping to solutions?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Solving the wrong problem is the single biggest waste of time in an entrepreneurial company. When teams rush to agree on a quick to-do just to check an issue off the list, they are treating symptoms rather than root causes. This creates a revolving door where the same underlying breakdown reappears every month disguised under different names.

The cure is strict adherence to the IDS process: Identify, Discuss, and Solve. Most teams spend two percent of their time identifying, ninety percent discussing in circles, and eight percent slapping on an inadequate fix. You must flip this ratio. Spend the vast majority of your time on the Identify step.

When an issue is raised, the facilitator must stop the team from debating solutions immediately. Ask the owner of the issue: "State the problem in one clear sentence." If they give a three-minute narrative, stop them and ask them to refine it to the core conflict.

Next, apply the Five Whys technique. If customer onboarding is taking too long, ask why. If the answer is that the setup team lacked client data, ask why the client data was missing. Continue peeling back the layers until you uncover the fundamental structural, process, or people breakdown. Often, an operational issue is actually an Accountability Chart problem where nobody has clear ownership, or a training gap where core processes are undocumented.

Never allow the team to move to Solve until everyone agrees: "Yes, that is the root issue." Once the root cause is correctly identified, solving it usually takes less than five minutes.