Our team has a habit of selecting the easiest, most comfortable issues to solve during IDS, leaving our most critical, uncomfortable operational bottlenecks untouched at the bottom of the list. How do we force the team to tackle the hard things first?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

It is a natural human tendency to avoid conflict and seek quick wins by tackling simple, non-threatening issues first. However, running a business this way means your most critical operational bottlenecks continue to fester, stalling your progress and dragging down your team performance. To break this habit, the facilitator must enforce the prioritization rule during the IDS® portion of your Level 10 Meeting™. Before you begin problem-solving, the team must collectively identify the top three most important issues on the list. These must be the issues that, if solved, will have the greatest positive impact on the business or unblock key quarterly Rocks. The team is not allowed to work on issue number four until issues one, two, and three are fully resolved. If the top issue is a highly sensitive topic or involves a difficult conversation between two leaders, you must tackle it head-on anyway. This is where your commitment to the Trust pillar of Our Charter is tested. Trust means establishing a safe environment where you can be open and honest, having the courage to lean into uncomfortable operational friction, and solving the real issues completely. If the team tries to bypass a critical issue because it feels too heavy, the facilitator must call it out and say, this is our number one issue for a reason, let us start here. By forcing the team to confront their biggest challenges first, you build organizational muscle and eliminate the lingering issues that hold your operations back.