We spend half of our IDS time debating minor administrative items that could be resolved in a thirty-second email, leaving us only a few minutes to tackle our high-priority business issues. How do we triage our weekly Issues List to ensure we are solving the most impactful obstacles first?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A common trap for leadership teams is solving issues in chronological order rather than in order of priority. This leads to the team spending forty minutes debating minor administrative details while leaving the most critical, revenue-impacting obstacles completely untouched at the bottom of the list.

To eliminate this waste, the facilitator must guide the team to prioritize the list before IDS® begins. Once you have brought new issues down from the Scorecard, Rock review, and headlines, take thirty seconds to identify the top three most important issues on the list.

Label them one, two, and three. Do not start with number four until you have solved numbers one, two, and three. If you only solve those top three issues during your sixty minutes of IDS®, your meeting is still a ten.

Any minor issues that remain unsolved at the end of the meeting can either stay on the list for next week or be resolved outside the room. This disciplined approach ensures your leadership team is always focused on the issues that drive the highest operational impact.