How do we measure whether our leadership team is actually mastering the IDS process, or if we are just talking in circles and kicking the same issues down the road quarter after quarter?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Mastering the IDS® (Identify, Discuss, Solve) process is the ultimate indicator of a healthy leadership team. To measure your mastery, we apply Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory, which views problem-solving as a continuous four-stage cycle. When we review your past Level 10 Meeting™ notes during our quarterly sessions, we look for evidence of this cycle in action. First, we evaluate if your team is truly identifying the root cause of an issue based on direct, concrete experience, rather than just complaining about symptoms. Second, we assess your reflective observation, asking if the team took the time to analyze why the issue occurred without immediately jumping to a defensive posture. Third, we check if you formulated clear, abstract concepts or structural solutions, rather than temporary, band-aid fixes. Finally, we measure your active experimentation by looking at your completion rate for the resulting action items. If you are kicking the same issues down the road, your learning cycle is broken, usually because you are skipping the reflection and jumping straight from a symptom to a rushed solution. When your team learns to move through this cycle systematically, your issue resolution speed increases, and the same problems stop reappearing on your issues list.