Our leadership team members frequently add raw, unstructured complaints to our weekly Issues List, which derails our IDS® process and wastes time. How do we train our team to prepare and define their issues before the meeting starts?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A highly productive IDS® session requires preparation before the Level 10 Meeting™ even begins. When team members drop vague issues like communication issues or sales are down onto the list, they force the entire team to spend twenty minutes just trying to understand what the problem actually is.

To fix this, you must enforce a strict standard for how issues are added to the board. The person listing the issue must be ready to state it in one clear sentence: who is involved, what is the specific gap, and what is the desired outcome. They must also determine whether the issue is a conflict, a process bottleneck, or a resource constraint.

If the owner of the issue cannot define it in one sentence, they are not ready to put it on the list. The Integrator should redirect them to do the necessary pre-work before bringing it to the team. By requiring this discipline, you prevent your weekly meetings from turning into therapy sessions and ensure your team spends its energy solving clear, actionable problems instead of debating vague frustrations.