In a prior life, I often found myself dealing with about 136 issues daily, hoping to solve as many business problems as possible. 

But, no matter how many issues I moved off my desk, the next day there'd be a few more there waiting for me. I measured my productivity and success by how many problems I could solve. Often I found myself solving the same issues over and over again. 

Sound familiar?

Two workers in the Operations Department of a company were working one Friday evening to push out a late delivery. One saw a problem about to happen and said to the other, “Look at that!  We can’t ship this out. This order is not correct.”

“You’re right,” said the other, “But neither one of us can fix it. Nobody can fix it until Monday. The boss told us to get this shipment out tonight, and we’ll get yelled at if we don’t. Remember what he did the last time something like this happened?”

So out the order went, and in came an angry customer complaint two days later when the order was delivered. And then out went a chunk of the profits from the order because it cost the company three times as much to fix the error than it would have to get it right the first time.

The autopilot can be an aviator’s best friend. It’s precise, alleviates workload, and provides good peace of mind. All positive factors, but if the pilot isn’t careful, it could lead to big trouble!

If you’ve ever walked into your Level 10 Meetings or Quarterly Planning and heard someone say “I don’t think we have any issues,” you’re on a slippery slope to mediocrity. If your meetings have become routine or your team looks to you as the source of substance for the agenda for the weekly time you’ve allotted together, then it’s time to consider some questions to better serve yourselves and your company.

As an EOS Implementer™ I work with leadership teams running their company on EOS^®, a business management system. During our quarterly sessions together, we spend a high percentage of our time on solving their issues. In the EOS Model™, the Issues Component™ has two tools. The first is the Issues List and the second is IDS™.