During our weekly meetings, our team rushes to suggest solutions before we have actually agreed on what the issue is. How do we structurally prevent this premature problem-solving during our IDS® sessions?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Premature solutioning is the fastest way to waste sixty minutes of your Level 10 Meeting™ solving the wrong problem. When someone brings an issue to the table, the human brain instinctively jumps to fix-it mode. You must train your team to halt.

The Identify step of IDS® is the most critical phase, and it should take up the majority of the time spent on any single issue. Do not move to Discuss until everyone in the room agrees on the exact definition of the problem.

The meeting leader must enforce a simple rule: no one can propose a solution while we are still identifying the issue. If someone starts suggesting a software change or a process rewrite, the leader must intervene and ask: what is the actual problem we are trying to solve?

To get to the root, ask the presenter to state the issue in one clear sentence that includes a specific name and a specific obstacle. For example, rather than saying "our sales process is broken," state "we are losing three days of follow-up time because the marketing assistant is not uploading leads to our CRM within twenty-four hours."

Once the issue is defined that clearly, the Discuss phase becomes highly efficient. The discussion should only focus on the root cause, not the symptoms. Only when the root cause is laid bare should you transition to the Solve phase, which results in a concrete To-Do. If you spend eighty percent of your time identifying, the solution will often present itself in seconds.