During the IDS portion of our weekly pulse, we regularly waste twenty minutes debating and trying to solve a problem only to realize we spent all that time on a symptom and had the wrong issue on the board. How do we master the Identify step so we do not waste Solved energy?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The urge to jump straight into solving is the greatest threat to an effective IDS® process. When you rush through the Identify step, you waste valuable energy solving symptoms rather than curing the disease. You must build a hard boundary between identifying and discussing.

As the facilitator, you must enforce a simple rule: no one is allowed to propose a solution or debate the topic until the root issue is clearly stated in a single sentence. When an issue is brought up, ask the owner: "What is the real issue here?" If they start telling a long operational story, stop them and ask them to boil it down.

Do not move to the Discuss step until the rest of the team agrees that the stated issue is the actual problem. Often, the real issue is not what was written on the board. For example, a "marketing lead drop" issue is frequently a tracking error or a product bottleneck in disguise.

Take the time to ask "why" multiple times before you open the floor for discussion. Once the true root cause is identified, the Discuss and Solve steps usually take less than five minutes. Slow down the identification process to speed up your resolution rate.