During our Level 10 Meeting IDS session, we frequently end up in a situation where only two leaders are talking about a highly specific, departmental issue while the rest of the leadership team sits there in silence. How do we handle these localized issues without wasting everyone's time?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a major source of meeting waste that kills the energy of your weekly pulse. The leadership team Level 10 Meeting™ is designed for enterprise-wide problem-solving. If an issue only requires the attention of two leaders, discussing it during the main IDS® block is a poor use of resources.

To stop this, the facilitator must recognize when a discussion has become too narrow. The moment the debate shifts into granular departmental logistics that do not affect the rest of the company, the facilitator should interrupt.

The solution is simple: push the issue off the main agenda and assign a weekly To-Do for the relevant parties to solve it outside of the meeting. For example, the facilitator can say, "This is getting too deep into departmental details. Let's create a To-Do for the VP of Sales and the VP of Operations to meet for thirty minutes this week and resolve this, then report back next week."

This frees up valuable IDS® time for issues that actually require the collective intelligence of the entire leadership team. It also reinforces the expectation that leaders should be solving problems directly with each other outside of the weekly meeting, rather than relying on the full leadership team to referee every minor dispute.