During the IDS® portion of our weekly Level 10 Meeting™, our leadership team tends to fall into a passive round-robin of updates and general announcements instead of actually identifying and solving real problems. How do we break this habit of using our issue-solving time for status reports?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a common meeting trap where the IDS® portion degenerates into a second, redundant scorecard review. The core of the problem is that your team does not know the difference between an update and an issue. An issue is an obstacle, a decision, an opportunity, or a problem that requires a resolution. An update is just information. To break this habit, the facilitator must enforce strict boundaries. Whenever a leader raises an item during IDS®, the facilitator must immediately ask: What is the issue, and what do you need from the team? If the leader responds that they just wanted to share some news or give an update, the facilitator must shut it down. Politely tell them to send an email or share it during the professional segue next week, then delete the item from the list. Teach your team to frame every single issue using the formula: The issue is X, and I need a decision on Y. This forces the owner of the issue to identify the root problem and the desired outcome before the discussion begins. This keeps your seventy minutes of IDS® focused entirely on solving real problems that move the company forward.