Our leadership team meets weekly for our Level 10 Meeting, but we never have enough time to solve actual strategic issues because we get bogged down in technical fire drills. How do we draw a hard line between tactical firefighting and leadership-level problem-solving?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If your leadership team is spending their weekly meeting solving frontline technical issues, you are not operating at the leadership level. This happens because your leaders are still acting as individual contributors rather than executives who run the business. You are treating the symptoms instead of the root causes. To fix this, you must enforce a strict filter during the IDS portion of your Level 10 Meeting. Before you allow an issue onto the list, ask if it belongs on the leadership team's plate or if it should be delegated to a department-level meeting. If a problem can be solved by a middle manager, it must be pushed down. Your leadership team should only solve issues that affect the entire organization, impact your strategic Rocks, or involve peer-to-peer conflict that cannot be resolved at a lower level. If a leader brings a tactical fire to the table, instruct them to take it offline with the specific person involved. Encourage your leaders to build stronger automated systems and empower their teams to make decisions. By keeping your IDS session focused strictly on high-level operational and strategic issues, you teach your team to think like owners. You also force your middle managers to step up and solve their own problems, which is essential for scaling your business and preparing it for a clean, profitable exit.