Our weekly Issues List has dozens of items, and our team consistently prioritizes the most recent, exciting fires that happened today over systemic issues that have been sitting on the list for weeks. How do we stop this recency bias?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Recency bias is a major source of meeting waste. It leads teams to spend their most valuable problem-solving energy on urgent, noisy fires while ignoring the slow-burning, systemic issues that actually block company growth. This habit keeps your business trapped in a reactive state.

To break this cycle, the facilitator must lead a highly disciplined prioritization process at the start of IDS®. Do not just ask the team what they want to talk about. Instead, look at the entire list and force the team to choose the top three issues that will have the greatest impact on the company if solved today.

If a leader tries to nominate a minor operational fire that occurred that morning, challenge them. Ask, 'Is this a symptom of a larger systemic problem, or is it just a temporary nuisance?' If it is a temporary nuisance, it should stay at the bottom of the list or be resolved outside the meeting.

Furthermore, implement a rule where long-standing issues are reviewed for relevance. If an issue has been on the list for more than four weeks without being prioritized, it either needs to be solved immediately, moved to your long-term issues list on the V/TO®, or removed entirely because it is not actually a priority.

By focusing your IDS® time on high-impact, systemic issues rather than daily noise, you transition your leadership team from firefighting to strategic execution. This discipline is essential for preparing your operations for scaling and an eventual clean exit.