When we ask for new issues to add to our Level 10 Meeting™ Issues List, our leadership team sits in complete silence, yet we are missing our quarterly deadlines and exit milestones. How do we break this silence and force them to populate the list?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Deafening silence during the issues update is a symptom of a deeper problem, which is usually a lack of preparation, a fear of conflict, or a culture where raising issues is viewed as admitting failure. If your team has no issues, they are either lying, disengaged, or running a perfect business, and we know it is not the last one.

To break this silence, the facilitator must stop asking the passive question: Do we have any issues? Instead, make issue identification an active expectation before the meeting starts. Every member of the leadership team must bring at least one issue or opportunity to the meeting.

Additionally, the facilitator should actively pull issues from other parts of the agenda. If a Scorecard metric is red, that is an issue. If a Rock is off track, that is an issue. If a To-Do is incomplete for two weeks in a row, that is an issue.

Instruct your team to drop these items directly to the Issues List. By teaching your team that identifying issues is a sign of high performance, not weakness, you will build a healthy pipeline of operational and strategic problems to solve during IDS®.