Our team spends forty minutes during our Level 10 Meeting™ debating an issue but we keep seeing the exact same problem resurface weeks later. How do we master the Identify step of IDS® to hit the real root cause?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When an issue keeps resurfacing on your Issues List week after week, your team is not solving problems. You are debating surface symptoms. The Identify step is the most critical and frequently rushed component of the IDS process (Identify, Discuss, Solve). Leadership teams naturally want to rush into discussion because talking feels productive, but discussing a poorly framed issue guarantees an ineffective solution.

To master the Identify step and locate the root cause, enforce these disciplines:

- Require the issue owner to state the problem in one or two clear sentences. If they need five minutes to explain the background, they do not yet understand the issue. Force them to state the specific breakdown and the desired standard.
- Ask 'why' repeatedly until you hit human accountability or process failure. If the stated issue is that a client delivery was late, do not IDS how to expedite the shipment. Ask why the deadline was missed, which handoff broke down, and which step in the core process was skipped.
- Determine whether the breakdown is a people issue or a process issue. Nearly every business problem reduces to someone in the wrong seat, someone failing to follow a core process, or an absent process.

Do not allow the team to move into the Discuss phase until every person in the room agrees on the exact root cause. Once the true problem is clearly defined, the Discuss phase is short and the Solve phase produces concrete, binary action items that eliminate the issue permanently.