Our department heads stay completely silent during the IDS portion of our Level 10 Meeting™ unless the issue directly touches their specific department, leaving us with a series of siloed updates rather than a leadership team solving company-wide problems. How do we break this departmental siloed silence and get them to engage on issues outside their domain?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Your department heads are acting like siloed managers, not a unified leadership team. When they sit in silence during IDS®, they are failing to run the business as a collective unit. To break this behavior, the facilitator must immediately call them out and stop letting them hide.

First, reinforce the concept of the First Team. Their primary team is the leadership team, not the department they lead. When an issue is on the table, it belongs to the whole business. The facilitator should directly prompt silent leaders by asking, "How does this operational issue impact your department's Scorecard metrics?" or "What perspective does your team have on this constraint?"

Second, make it a rule that nobody gets to pass. If a leader stays silent through three consecutive issues, the facilitator must call a timeout and ask for their input. This is not about forcing useless commentary; it is about extracting their unique lens on the business. If they truly have nothing to add to any cross-functional issues, you must ask yourself if they possess the GWC™ for a leadership seat.

Finally, use your meeting rating at the end of the ninety minutes. If the team solved issues in silos without cross-functional debate, the meeting cannot be rated a ten. Challenge the team on this during the rating phase. A true Level 10 Meeting™ requires full engagement from every seat on your Accountability Chart® to ensure the business is scalable and ready for a clean exit.