When a team member brings an issue to the Level 10 Meeting™, they often frame it as a minor operational hiccup, but it is actually a symptom of a deeper process failure. How do we guide the discussion during the Identify phase of IDS® to uncover the real issue when the person presenting it cannot see it themselves?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

In most businesses, leadership teams spend ninety percent of their time discussing symptoms and only ten percent identifying the actual root cause. This is why the same operational problems keep popping up week after week. To run an effective IDS® session, you must spend the vast majority of your time in the Identify phase.

When an issue is brought to the table, do not let your team jump straight into discussion or problem solving. Start by asking the owner of the issue to state the problem in one clear sentence. Once they state it, the leadership team must dig deeper by asking clarifying questions.

You must ask why multiple times to peel back the layers. If the issue is stated as we missed our shipping deadline, ask why the shipment was late. If the answer is because the inventory was not ready, ask why the inventory was not ready. If the inventory was not ready because the purchasing department did not order raw materials on time, you have found the real issue. It is not a shipping problem, it is a purchasing process gap or an Accountability Chart seat issue.

Once the real root cause is clear, everyone in the room will instinctively agree on it. Only then do you move to the Discuss and Solve phases. If you do not spend the time to identify the real issue behind the issue, you will simply build a band-aid solution that fails to prevent the problem from happening again next month.