Our short-term Issues List regularly balloons to thirty or forty items, making it impossible to solve them all in the sixty minutes we have for IDS. How do we manage this backlog without ignoring important operational problems?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A bloated short-term Issues List is usually a symptom of a team that does not know how to filter or prioritize. If you have forty issues on your list, you do not have forty high-priority issues; you have a lack of focus.

To clean up your list, the facilitator must enforce three strict rules. First, prioritize ruthlessly. At the beginning of the IDS segment, the team must choose only the top three most important issues to solve today. Do not look at any other issues until those three are resolved.

Second, push non-leadership issues down the Accountability Chart. If an issue can be solved by a departmental team, remove it from the leadership list and send it to the appropriate departmental Level 10 Meeting.

Third, move strategic, long-term items to your V/TO Long-Term Issues List. If an issue does not need to be solved this week or even this quarter, it does not belong on your short-term list.

By keeping your weekly focus on the three most critical operational roadblocks, you will find that many minor issues resolve themselves or disappear when the root causes are addressed. Keep your list lean, focus on the vital few, and let the rest go.