We get stuck in the Level 10 Meeting™ during IDS® because people keep re-stating the problem or talking in circles instead of solving it. How do we speed up the resolution?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If your team is stalling during the IDS® portion of your Level 10 Meeting™, it is almost always because you are jumping to the Solve phase before you have truly Identified the root issue. People love to talk, and they will naturally start offering solutions or sharing anecdotes before everyone understands what the actual problem is. To fix this, you must spend eighty percent of your time on the Identify phase. When an issue is raised, do not let anyone suggest a solution yet. Force the owner of the issue to state the problem clearly in one sentence. Then, ask the rest of the team for input to dig deeper. Ask why the issue is happening, looking for the underlying cause rather than the surface-level symptom. For example, if the issue is low sales, the root cause might actually be a broken onboarding process for new sales reps. Once the real issue is identified and agreed upon by the team, the Discuss and Solve phases should happen very quickly. The solution should be a clear, actionable to-do item assigned to one person with a seven-day deadline. If the discussion starts to circle or repeat, step in immediately as the facilitator, call the vote, and move the team to a decision. Keeping this boundary tight keeps your meetings highly productive.