I sat in a Rotary meeting a month or so ago where we were reviewing our annual fundraiser. By every meaningful measure, the event had been a huge success — money raised, people showed up, the mission got served. But as these reviews always go, there were a few rough edges to talk through, and one of them was the food.
For the next twenty minutes, nearly everyone at the table had something to say about it. Guests hated it. Dry. Not enough of it. People barely touched their plates. Round and round it went — one more person, one more version of the same complaint — and then, right on schedule, someone said “okay, let’s move on to the next topic” and the conversation shifted.
I stopped it. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Everyone has complained about the food. And… what are we going to do about it?”
That question changed the whole tenor of the room. We started peeling back the onion. Why did this happen? Turned out the head chef wasn’t even there that day. There were too many entrée choices for the kitchen to execute well under pressure. Service was disorganized, plates sitting too long before they reached the table. Once we understood the why, the what-are-we-going-to-do part practically wrote itself: make sure the chef is present next time, cut the menu down to one or two entrées that are far easier to prepare and serve well, tighten up the service flow. Fifteen minutes later, we had a real plan. Not a vague promise to “do better” — an actual list of specific changes that would prevent the same complaint from showing up again next year.
Here’s what stuck with me afterward. That room was full of smart, capable, well-intentioned people. They knew exactly what was wrong. What they didn’t know how to do, instinctively, was turn “here’s the problem” into “here’s what we’re changing.” And I don’t think that room is unusual at all. I’d bet most of you have sat in a version of that exact meeting — at work, on a board, in a committee — where everyone lays out every issue in vivid detail, nobody proposes a fix, and the meeting just… moves on. Then, predictably, the same issue shows up again next month, next quarter, next year, because nothing about the underlying cause ever actually changed.
This is precisely the gap that EOS’s Identify-Discuss-Solve process — IDS — was built to close, and it’s also the entire reason the Level 10 Meeting exists in the shape it does. Most meetings are excellent at identifying problems and even discussing them at length. Where they fall apart is the third step: actually solving it, at the root, so it doesn’t come back. IDS forces a room to do what I did at that Rotary table almost by instinct — stop the venting,
ask “why did this really happen,” and don’t leave until there’s a specific, ownable action attached to the answer.
If you want to bring more of that discipline into your own meetings, here’s where I’d start:
1. Ban the drive-by complaint. The moment someone raises an issue, the room’s job shifts immediately to “why is this happening” — not to sympathizing, and not to piling on with more examples of the same problem. One clear statement of the issue is enough; the group’s energy should go toward the cause.
2. Peel back the onion. Don’t stop at the first answer to “why did this happen” — that’s usually just a symptom. Keep asking why until you hit the actual root cause. In the food example, “the food was bad” isn’t the root cause — no chef present, too many entrée choices, and disorganized service were. Fix the surface answer and the same complaint comes right back next time; fix the root and it doesn’t.
3. Always ask “so what are we going to do about it” before moving to the next agenda item. Make it a habit, out loud, every single time an issue gets raised. If the room can’t answer that question yet, that’s fine — but say so explicitly, and assign someone to bring back an answer, rather than letting the topic quietly disappear.
4. Assign one owner and one deadline to every solution. A great fix that belongs to “the team” belongs to no one. Give it a name and a date, or it will evaporate exactly the way the food complaint would have.
5. Revisit old issues on purpose. At your next relevant meeting, briefly check whether last time’s fix actually worked. This is what separates real problem-solving from performative problem-solving — closing the loop, not just opening it.
The businesses — and boards, and committees — that actually improve over time aren’t the ones with the fewest problems. They’re the ones who’ve built a habit out of finishing the sentence: here’s what’s wrong, and here’s exactly what we’re doing about it.
If your meetings tend to surface the same issues again and again without ever really solving them, I’d love to talk through what a real IDS process could look like in your world.