Our weekly Issues List has ballooned to over forty items because our leaders are dropping minor, low-level departmental complaints into the leadership Level 10 Meeting rather than solving them within their own seats. How do we filter out this issue inflation?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A bloated Issues List is a sign that your leadership team is failing to solve problems at the lowest possible level. When your weekly list exceeds forty items, your Level 10 Meeting™ becomes bogged down by minor operational details, leaving no time to tackle the systemic bottlenecks that are holding your company back.

To stop this issue inflation, the facilitator must enforce strict gatekeeping. Before any item is added to the leadership Issues List, it must pass a simple test: does this issue truly require the collective brainpower of the entire leadership team to solve? If the answer is no, the item must be removed.

Many issues can and should be resolved between two individual leaders outside of the ninety-minute weekly pulse. Other issues belong entirely within a specific department and should be handled in that department's own Level 10 Meeting™.

Encourage your team to practice the principle of seat accountability. If a leader brings a minor issue to the table, the facilitator should ask, 'Which seat on the Accountability Chart® owns this, and have the two affected parties tried to solve it directly?' If they have not, push the issue back to those individuals. Keeping your leadership Issues List clean ensures that your weekly energy is focused on the highest-priority operational and exit-readiness challenges.