Our department heads are struggling to facilitate their own Level 10 Meetings™ because their team members treat the Issues List as a place to complain about other departments. How do we keep departmental L10s focused on what that specific team can control?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When departmental Issues Lists are flooded with complaints about other teams, it is a sign of finger-pointing and a lack of local accountability. It means your staff is using the meeting to vent rather than to solve issues within their direct control.

The department facilitator must enforce a strict filter: if an issue is brought up, the team must first ask if they have the power to solve it. If the issue is entirely owned by another department, it does not belong on their local Level 10 Meeting™ list.

Instead, the department head must take that issue and push it up to the leadership team's Issues List, or address it directly with the other department head peer-to-peer.

For issues that are cross-functional, the local team can only solve their side of the equation. The facilitator must ask: what is our twenty percent of this problem that we can fix today?

This discipline keeps the team focused on their own Accountability Chart seats. It prevents the meeting from turning into a toxic complaining session. By keeping the focus on local ownership, you build a culture of high performance and mutual respect throughout the entire organization.