Are you plagued with those pesky lingering boomerang issues in your business? You know those ones that just won’t go away? I want to share with you an example of when a client had this challenge and how they solved it.

We’ve all got issues in our business. They are unresolved problems, barriers, obstacles but don’t forget the unleveraged opportunities and ideas. But what if we have boomerang issues? Even though we find a way to tackle the issues temporarily, they keep coming back, sometimes with a vengeance.

So, what do we do about them?  How do we make these issues go away FOREVER?

I have a client with an amazing, charismatic, powerful visionary leader. He is a master at getting people excited about his ideas and gets pretty emotional when things aren’t going well. He is truly invested in his organization, but they had a big issue that needed solving. Before working together, they simply didn’t hold meetings with their leadership team. Seriously, none.

What they did do was hold ad hoc, random one-on-one meetings. While issues were addressed in these one-on-ones, the solutions were not shared well. Do you remember that telephone game you played as a kid? It was kind of like that. Their issue solutions were getting passed along from one person to the next, getting modified and occasionally even getting lost. They were effectively duct taping solutions together and they knew they weren’t on the same page.

This meant nothing was solved permanently. These lingering issues would boomerang back and just be there again the next week. The end result was that they were living in constant chaos. Opportunities were getting missed. And there was a ton of wasted energy, so the team was getting fatigued and frustrated, which led to more turnover. Bottom line, they were in a lot of pain.

What Did We Do To Fix It?

In the Entrepreneur Operating System™ (EOS), one of the Six Key Components that we strengthen is the Issues component. In this case, we started off by identifying the root cause of their problem: a lack of team meetings with dedicated issues solving time. In EOS we use what’s called a Level-10 meeting, so as part of my working with them, we implemented regularly scheduled leadership team meetings or L10’s.  

L10 meetings consist of many parts, but today I’m going to focus on the issue solving component (IDS) of those meetings.

  1. Set a time.  First, we must set a hard-and-fast time limit for how long we’re going to issue solve.
  2. Make a list. Then we simply make a list; being open, honest, and vulnerable while populating that list with all the opportunities, barriers and problems we are faced with.
  3. Prioritize the top 3 issues. Next, we prioritize the top three issues. Spend no more than 30 seconds here. Let’s not waste time “talking about what we’re going to talk about” that’d be silly!
  4. IDS. Lastly, we’re gonna use the Issue Solving Track™, which is IDS – Identify, Discuss, Solve.

More About IDS and the Issue Solving Track

Identify

We must Identify the root cause of the issue. What’s really going on here? We need to “hit the nerve.” We need to “peel the onion” to find the root cause of the issue. Once we’ve identified the root cause only then do we move to Discuss.

Discuss

Next, we discuss the issue with a meaningful, focused, targeted discussion on what’s really going on with the particular issue. What are the issues at play? What are the things we need to know? What are the potential solutions? Once we’ve flushed out the best options, we need to move to Solve.

Solve

Lastly, we need to solve the issue. We look for a PERMANENT solution that benefits the greater good, long-term health of the organization. Let’s obsess about Solving. Let’s make sure we solve it so we never have to talk about it again. Don’t leave any loose ends (i.e. who’s doing what by when?). Only then will it truly be solved.

We IDS the issues one at a time until our allotted time is up. Using the Issue Solving Track and IDS in team meetings, makes them become more effective. Teams have the opportunity on a regular basis to solve the boomerang effect of lingering issues.

My client company is now using L10s and IDS time has become their favorite time of the week. I hope this example helped you understand how you can use dedicated issues solving time to make your business better.

If you ever want help implementing IDS or any of the other EOS tools, please reach out to us.

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