During IDS, our leadership team frequently gets pulled down operational rabbit holes and irrelevant tangents, leaving our top priority issues unresolved at the end of ninety minutes. How do we police rabbit holes without stifling productive debate?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Rabbit holes happen when a leadership team treats symptoms instead of identifying the root cause, or when someone brings up an unvetted secondary issue mid-debate.

To kill meeting waste, the team must master the Identify phase of IDS. Before anyone is allowed to discuss solutions, the issue owner must articulate the real problem in one clear sentence. If the team starts offering solutions while the problem is still murky, they will chase tangents for forty minutes.

The facilitator and every team member must have permission to use the word tangent freely. The moment the conversation drifts away from the stated root cause, someone must call it out: Tangent.

Once called, the facilitator pauses the discussion and asks the group: Does this new point belong to the root problem we are solving, or is it a separate issue?

If it is a separate issue, drop it to the bottom of the Issues List. Do not engage it now. Then immediately return to the primary issue.

Solving three issues completely at their root cause is infinitely better than talking about ten issues superficially. Discipline during IDS is what separates an elite operating team from a loose committee.