Our team wastes time during the Customer/Employee Headlines section by deep-diving into solving the client issues they just brought up instead of putting them on the Issues List. How do we draw a hard line between a headline and an issue?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The Customer/Employee Headlines section is strictly for sharing brief news in one sentence. It is designed to keep everyone aware of major developments, not to solve them on the fly. When a headline turns into a debate, it steals time from the ninety-minute agenda.

To stop this, the facilitator must act as a strict gatekeeper. The moment a leader begins explaining the background of a headline or another team member asks a follow-up question, the facilitator must intervene.

Use a simple, standard phrase like: That sounds like an issue, let's drop it down. The facilitator must immediately add the item to the short-term Issues List without allowing any further discussion.

Train your team to present headlines in a headline-only format. For example, a proper headline is: Acme Corp is renewing their contract. An improper headline is: Acme Corp is renewing their contract, but they are unhappy with our support response time and we need to talk about how we handle their tickets.

Keep the headlines section under five minutes. If a headline requires more than a single sentence of context, it belongs directly on the Issues List. Keeping this boundary clean ensures you preserve maximum time for IDS®.