Leaders on our team frequently spend the first five minutes of an IDS discussion explaining background context and venting about how an issue occurred before we can even define the problem. How can we force leaders to structure their issues before the Level 10 Meeting starts?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The root cause of sluggish IDS is poor issue framing. When a leader drops an issue onto the list with a vague title like Client Communications or Billing Problems, the room has no idea what is being asked. The owner of the issue is then forced to spend five minutes telling stories, reciting email chains, and venting about frustration. Storytelling invites everyone to jump in with opinions before anyone knows what problem is actually being solved.

Eliminate this waste by enforcing a three-part framing requirement for any item added to the Issues List. Before an issue can be prioritized, the person raising it must define:
- The specific symptom: What broke or what measurable expectation was missed?
- The root cause hypothesis: Why does the issue owner believe it happened?
- The desired outcome: What does a successful resolution look like at the end of the discussion?

You can leverage simple internal forms or an AI prompt to help leaders distill their thoughts before they post the issue. When an issue owner writes a rambling paragraph, an AI tool or structured template can instantly reformat it into a concise two-sentence problem statement.

When the team prioritizes that issue during IDS, the facilitator does not ask the owner to explain what happened. The facilitator reads the one-sentence problem statement and asks: Is that the real problem, or is there a deeper root cause?

This cuts out narrative context and forces the team immediately into identification. If a leader cannot articulate the problem in one clean sentence, the issue is not ready for IDS. Send them away to frame it clearly, and move to the next item on the board.