Our departmental managers keep bringing minor, day-to-day operational issues up to the leadership team Level 10 Meeting instead of solving them in their own departmental meetings. How do we keep departmental issues out of the leadership box?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When minor operational issues frequently surface in your leadership team's Level 10 Meeting, it signals a lack of respect for your Accountability Chart. Your leadership team should dedicate its time to strategic, systemic issues that impact the entire company or necessitate cross-departmental collaboration. Day-to-day operational problems must be resolved at the departmental level.

Filtering Issues for the Leadership Team

To effectively manage your leadership Issues List, you must implement a rigorous filtering process.

• Identify Ownership: Every time an issue is brought up, the facilitator should ask which seat on the [Accountability Chart](/qa/resolving-accountability-chart-seat-overlaps) owns this particular problem.
• Departmental Scope: If an issue falls entirely within the domain of a single department and does not affect the broader organization, it does not belong in the leadership meeting.
• Reassign and Delegate: The leader of that department must take ownership of the issue, remove it from the leadership list, and add it to their own departmental Level 10 Issues List to be solved with their team.
• Empower Problem-Solving: Teach your leaders to solve problems at the lowest possible level. If you consistently solve departmental issues in the leadership meeting, you are fostering dependency and hindering your managers' development of their own leadership capabilities.
• Collective Brainpower Test: Encourage your team to ask themselves if the issue truly requires the collective brainpower of the entire leadership team. If the answer is no, delete it from the leadership list and promptly push it down to the correct departmental "box."

This approach helps maintain the integrity of the Level 10 Meeting, ensuring it remains focused on critical, company-wide challenges, similar to how proper [scorecard review](/qa/how-to-review-scorecard-under-five-minutes) keeps meetings efficient. By doing so, you empower your managers and foster a culture of accountability.

The Role of AI

AI does not participate in the Level 10 Meeting itself. Its value lies in preparatory work before the meeting, such as collating data, and in post-meeting tasks, like capturing decisions and tracking progress. The 90 minutes of the meeting should remain a human-centric interaction focusing on:

• Your leadership team
• The Scorecard
• The Issues List
• The IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) conversation

For instance, AI can assist in [optimizing EOS Scorecard metrics](/qa/ai-in-optimizing-eos-scorecard-metrics-and-accountability) or even [filtering meeting transcripts for Accountability Chart issues](/qa/filter-meeting-transcripts-accountability-chart-ai), but it should not replace the human element of problem-solving and decision-making during the meeting.

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