Our Level 10 Meeting Issues List has a core group of complex, uncomfortable issues that have been sitting at the bottom of the list for months because the team consistently prioritizes easier, short-term issues. How do we purge or force a resolution on these lingering items without letting them clutter our agenda forever?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

An Issues List that never gets shorter is a sign of a team that is practicing conflict avoidance. When difficult, high-stakes issues sit at the bottom of the list for weeks, they drain energy and create a false sense of progress. Your team is simply picking the low-hanging fruit to feel productive while ignoring the structural rot.

To resolve these lingering issues, you must implement a strict age-limit rule. During the prioritization step of IDS®, the facilitator must highlight any issue that has been on the list for more than three weeks. These aged issues must automatically be moved to the top three priorities for that meeting. No exceptions.

If the team still struggles to address them because they are too large, the issue is likely defined poorly. You must break it down. Ask the team to identify the single, smallest step needed to make progress on the problem, and create a seventy-two-hour to-do for that step.

If an issue has been on the list for a month and the team still cannot find a way to tackle it, it may not actually be an active issue. The facilitator should challenge the team to either solve it, shelve it by putting it on the long-term Issues List on the V/TO®, or delete it entirely. If it is not important enough to solve now, get it off your weekly list so it stops cluttering your focus.