Two of our department heads frequently bring issues to the Level 10 Meeting™ Issues List that are clearly personal disagreements or minor operational disputes between just the two of them. How do we stop them from wasting the entire leadership team's time?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Your weekly Level 10 Meeting™ is a collective leadership resource, not a stage for private arbitration. When two leaders spend twenty minutes bickering over a minor workflow dispute during IDS®, the other five people in the room are mentally checking out. This is a massive waste of payroll and organizational energy. The rule for any issue on the list is that it must require the collective wisdom or decision-making power of the entire leadership team. If an issue only affects two departments, those two leaders must try to resolve it offline first. To enforce this, the facilitator must step in the moment a localized dispute begins. Ask both leaders: Have you two met outside this room to resolve this? If the answer is no, the facilitator must immediately remove the item from the list and assign a weekly to-do for those two individuals to meet and solve it before the next meeting. If they did meet offline and reached an absolute deadlock that threatens the company's V/TO® or quarterly Rocks, then and only then does it become a legitimate leadership team issue. By forcing leaders to have these hard conversations one on one before bringing them to the L10, you build healthier peer-to-peer accountability and keep your weekly meetings incredibly efficient.