Our leadership team members wait until the actual IDS® portion of the Level 10 Meeting™ has started to add their issues to the list, which makes it impossible to prioritize properly and leads to chaotic meetings. How do we build the discipline of pre-populating our Issues List?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When leaders wait until the actual Level 10 Meeting™ is underway to add their items to the Issues List, they destroy the team's ability to prioritize effectively. It leads to a chaotic, reactive meeting where the team tackles whatever was added last, rather than what is most important for the business.

To cure this habit, you must build the discipline of pre-populating the Issues List throughout the week. An issue should be captured the moment it is identified, not saved in a leader's head until Tuesday morning.

Establish a hard rule: the Issues List is locked fifteen minutes before the meeting starts. Any issue added after that deadline is pushed to the bottom of the list or saved for the following week, unless it is a genuine, business-stopping emergency.

Encourage your team to use your software or shared document as a continuous logging tool. When a leader notices a bottleneck on Thursday, they should add it to the list right then and there. This allows the Integrator to review the list ahead of time, spot patterns, and come to the meeting prepared to lead an efficient prioritization process. When the team arrives with a fully populated list, you can spend your ninety minutes solving issues instead of organizing them.