Our leadership team constantly gets sucked into solving tactical frontline emergencies during our Level 10 Meeting, leaving no time to resolve the strategic issues holding back our business. How do we stop executives from operating below their pay grade?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If your leadership team spends its weekly meeting fixing frontline customer complaints, rescheduling jobs, or approving routine vendor bills, you do not have an executive team. You have an expensive committee of frontline firefighters.

This tactical gravitational pull happens for two reasons: either the leaders are addicted to the dopamine hit of solving easy, immediate problems, or the tier below them lacks the authority and training to resolve issues on their own.

To break this habit, enforce strict discipline during the IDS portion of your Level 10 Meeting. Every time an issue is dropped onto the list, the Integrator must ask two qualifying questions before anyone speaks:

- Does this issue belong at the executive table, or does it belong in a departmental meeting?
- Is this an isolated tactical blip, or is it a systemic breakdown in our Core Processes?

If the issue is tactical, immediately push it down. Assign the responsible seat owner a to-do to delegate it to their department managers. If the issue is systemic, strip away the frontline drama and solve the root process failure so the emergency cannot happen again.

Next, look at the Accountability Chart. If your direct reports are constantly escalating basic operational decisions to leadership, your middle managers are either ill-defined or disempowered. Give your department heads the tools and boundary lines to make decisions without executive clearance. The leadership team must spend its weekly time working on the business, not trapped inside it.