Our Visionary frequently brings half-baked, high-level strategic ideas to our weekly Level 10 Meeting, which completely derails our operational focus and eats up our IDS time. How do we keep these big ideas out of our weekly tactical pulse?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Visionaries are built to generate ideas, but dumping those ideas into the weekly Level 10 Meeting is a recipe for operational chaos. You must protect your tactical weekly pulse from strategic distractions by utilizing the correct compartments.

First, teach your Visionary the difference between a short-term issue and a long-term opportunity. A weekly Level 10 Meeting is designed to solve issues that are preventing us from hitting our targets this quarter. If an idea does not directly impact a current Rock, Scorecard metric, or quarterly goal, it does not belong on the short-term Issues List.

Second, utilize the long-term Issues List on your V/TO as a parking lot. When the Visionary brings up a strategic idea, the facilitator must politely but firmly intercept it and say that this is a great idea, and we should park it on our long-term list for our next quarterly session.

Third, ensure the Visionary and Integrator are having their regular Same Page meetings outside of the Level 10 Meeting. This is the correct forum for the Visionary to download raw ideas, allowing the Integrator to filter and organize them before they ever reach the rest of the leadership team.