Our weekly Level 10 Meeting™ has become incredibly short because our leadership team arrives with an empty Issues List, claiming that everything is running perfectly, even though our quarterly numbers are lagging. How do we break this false harmony and force our team to bring real issues to the table?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If your leadership team arrives at your Level 10 Meeting™ with an empty Issues List while your company is missing its targets, you do not have a perfect business, you have a trust problem. An empty list is a clear indicator of false harmony, fear of conflict, or sheer laziness.

To break this silence, the facilitator and the owner must actively mine for conflict. You must make it unacceptable to have an empty list. Before the meeting even starts, review the weekly scorecard and the status of quarterly Rocks. If a metric is red or a Rock is off track, and there are no corresponding items on the Issues List, that is an immediate red flag.

The facilitator must call this out. Ask the metric owner why the issue is not on the list. If they say they are working on it, explain that working on it offline does not solve the organizational block. Push it onto the list anyway.

Additionally, the owner should lead by adding at least two issues to the list before every meeting. These do not have to be disasters; they can be opportunities or processes that feel clunky. By consistently bringing issues to the table, you show the team that identifying problems is a sign of strength and leadership, not a confession of weakness. Normalize the reality that a healthy growing company always has issues.