Our Level 10 Meeting™ is highly efficient, but we find that our leadership team spends too much time discussing minor, low-impact issues during IDS® rather than tackling the big structural issues holding the company back. How do we filter and prioritize our weekly issues list so we are only solving what truly matters?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Spending your Level 10 Meeting™ solving minor, tactical issues is a common symptom of a leadership team that is avoiding conflict or failing to think structurally. To fix this, you must change how issues are added to the list and how you prioritize them.

First, establish a clear rule for what qualifies as an issue for the leadership team. If an issue can be solved within a single department or by two leaders talking outside of the meeting, it does not belong on your leadership team's weekly Issues List. Push those issues back down to the departmental level. The leadership team's time should be reserved for issues that impact multiple departments, require strategic alignment, or threaten your quarterly Rocks.

Second, use your prioritization discipline ruthlessly. When you transition to IDS®, do not start at the top of the list. Take sixty seconds to review the entire list and select the top three most critical issues facing the company today. Solve issue number one, then number two, then number three.

If you run out of time before reaching the minor issues, that is a win. It means you spent your ninety minutes on the high-impact problems that actually move the business forward. By maintaining this strict filter, you train your team to bring only their most significant challenges to the table, raising the strategic value of your Level 10 Meeting™.