While we are good at keeping our scorecard and Rock reviews brief, our weekly Level 10 Meeting™ completely derails during the IDS® portion when solving one issue morphs into discussing three other unrelated topics, leaving us with zero solved issues. How do we stop this internal agenda drift?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a common facilitation failure known as issue nesting. A team member brings up a real issue, and within two minutes of discussion, someone else says that reminds them of another problem, and the team chases that new rabbit trail. Before you know it, you are thirty minutes deep into a discussion about software integration when you started on a simple customer billing issue. To stop this drift, the facilitator must hold the team to the strict three-step IDS® process.

- Identify. You do not start discussing the issue until everyone in the room agrees on the single root cause. Define it in one sentence and write it down.

- Discuss. The facilitator must act as an active referee. The moment someone introduces an unrelated topic, cut them off and drop it to the bottom of the list.

- Solve. You do not move on until there is a clear, actionable to-do assigned to a specific seat on the Accountability Chart®.

Discipline in IDS® is about saying no to distractions.