Our leadership team spends the first ten to fifteen minutes of our IDS session arguing over which issues on our list are the most important to solve today, which leaves us with very little time to actually solve them. How do we streamline this prioritization process?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Prioritization paralysis is a classic symptom of a leadership team that lacks alignment on their immediate operational focus. When you argue over which issues to tackle first, you are wasting the very energy required to solve those problems.

To streamline your IDS® session, you must enforce a strict, fast prioritization process. The facilitator should lead the team through a rapid-fire selection of the top three issues. Use these steps to complete this in less than two minutes:
- The facilitator asks the team to look at the entire issues list.
- The facilitator calls on the team to nominate the absolute top three issues that must be solved today to move the business forward.
- Do not allow debate on why an issue is selected. If there is a disagreement, the Integrator makes the final call on the top three.

Once the top three are identified, you immediately begin with issue number one. Do not look at issue four or five until the first three are completely solved.

By focusing on only three issues at a time, you remove the overwhelm of a long list and eliminate the debate over order. Remember, you do not need to solve every issue on the board every single week. You only need to solve the most critical ones. Solving three issues permanently is infinitely better than discussing twenty issues superficially.