Your success is directly proportional to your ability to solve issues.
Solving issues, once and for all, is one of the weakest aspects in many businesses. Ever been in a meeting and said, didn’t we just have this problem 3 weeks ago???
IDS
In the EOS model™, we teach a discipline called IDS to make companies stronger at solving issues. IDS is a mnemonic that stands for Identify, Discuss, and Solve. It works like this:
- Identify
- build a list of the issues
- prioritize the top 3 biggest issues (focus on the important stuff first)
- start with #1 and identify the root cause (chances are you captured a symptom, try asking ‘why did that happen’ five times)
- Discuss
- now that you know the root issue, go around the table and let everyone weigh in
- encourage healthy debate – it makes for a better solution (you have to weigh in to buy in)
- but only go around the table once, more than once and people start politicking…
- Solve
- 95% of the time, if you did a good job at identifying the issue, the solve is obvious
- state the conclusion and who is going to do what to solve it once and for all
- move on to issue #2 if you still have time; solve as many as you can in the allotted time and roll the rest to the next meeting
4 Steps to be Great
Now that you understand the model we use for solving issues, here’s 4 steps to be great at it:
- Who’s teeing it up?
- Who are you talking to?
- State the issue in one sentence (hit the nerve)
- “Look eye”
For each issue on your issues list you need to know who is teeing it up? This should typically be the person who has the issue.
Who are they talking to? Who, or what department/organization, do they have an issue with? If they are ‘talking to everyone’ then they are talking to the Integrator (see this link if you don’t know the Integrator term).
Now be prepared to state the issue is one sentence. This is VERY hard for some people. They feel the need to provide a background story, perhaps trying to soften the blow or justify their concern. Just hit the nerve! State it in one sentence.
And finally, look eye – when discussing the issue, look into the eyes of the person you have the issue with.
Use IDS along with these 4 Steps and solve your issues, once and for all – your success depends on it.
Want the Agenda that that over 3000 companies use for their weekly issues meeting? Get it here…