Our weekly Level 10 Meeting™ Issues List has ballooned to over forty items, and we are spending too much time during our ninety minutes just reading through the list to find the top three. How do we keep our Issues List clean and actionable without deleting important problems?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

An overloaded Issues List is a symptom of a team that cannot prioritize or is using the list as a digital junk drawer for every minor complaint and random idea. When your list exceeds twenty items, it creates decision fatigue, and your team will naturally default to solving the easiest, least impactful problems first.

To clean up the list, you must implement a strict filtering process. First, remember that not every issue needs to be solved by the whole leadership team. If an issue only involves two leaders, they should take it offline and solve it in a separate working session. Delete it from the Level 10 Meeting™ list immediately.

Second, separate your weekly issues from your long-term issues. If an issue is strategic, long-term, or requires deep planning, it does not belong on the weekly Level 10 Meeting™ agenda. Move it to your V/TO® Section 7 or save it for your next Quarterly Planning session.

Finally, before you start IDS®, the facilitator must ruthlessly push the team to identify only the top three issues for that day. Do not look at the other thirty-seven items. Once the top three are solved, and only then, do you select the next three. If an issue sits on the list for more than four weeks without being prioritized, delete it or archive it. If it is truly important, it will come back.