During our IDS sessions, we constantly suffer from agenda drift where one issue quickly mutates into five unrelated operational complaints, leaving us with zero solved problems at the end of ninety minutes. How do we keep the team strictly focused on the issue at hand?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Agenda drift is the silent killer of the Level 10 Meeting™. It happens because your team is reacting to symptoms instead of digging for the root cause. A leader brings up a problem, and immediately someone else says that reminds them of a different issue in their department, and suddenly you are discussing software logins instead of a sales drop. To stop this, the facilitator must enforce strict discipline. The moment a team member starts discussing a tangent, the facilitator must step in and ask if this conversation is directly helping to identify, discuss, or solve the current priority item. If the answer is no, the facilitator must park the tangent on the Issues List to be prioritized later and pull the team back to the active issue. Do not worry about hurting feelings. A good facilitator is a protector of the team's time. You must also ensure you are truly in the Identify phase before you begin discussing. Often, drift happens because the team starts trying to solve a problem before they actually agree on what the real issue is. Spend more time defining the problem. Once the problem is crystal clear, the discussion is narrow and focused, and the solution becomes obvious. Keep the debate tight, call out drift immediately, and protect the agenda.