During the IDS portion of our Level 10 Meeting, we frequently find ourselves debating and trying to solve issues that directly involve team members who are not in the room. This leads to endless assumptions and half-baked solutions that fail. How do we handle issues on our list that require input from absent team members?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Trying to solve an issue without the key people in the room is a waste of time. It leads to speculation, incorrect assumptions, and decisions that ultimately fall apart because the people responsible for executing them were never consulted.

To keep your Level 10 Meetings™ highly productive, establish a strict rule: do not attempt to fully solve an issue if the primary owner or a critical stakeholder is absent.

When you reach an issue on your list that requires input from an absent team member, the facilitator should stop the discussion immediately. Instead of guessing what that person thinks or what the data is, assign a brief To-Do to one of the leaders in the room. This To-Do should be highly specific, such as, meet with the customer service manager to gather client feedback on this issue.

Alternatively, if the person is in the building, you can invite them into the meeting for a brief, five-minute window to answer a specific question, then dismiss them immediately.

Once the necessary information is gathered, put the issue back on the agenda for the following week. This discipline prevents your leadership team from making uninformed decisions and ensures that when you do solve an issue, it stays solved.