You know that issue. The one that’s been on your Issues List so long it practically has seniority.
It shows up in your Level 10 Meeting like clockwork. Someone mentions it—a few heads nod. Maybe there’s a brief discussion, a To-Do gets assigned, and the meeting moves on. Everyone feels productive.
But here’s the thing: nothing actually changed. The issue is still there. It’ll be back next week, wearing slightly different clothes.
That’s not an IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) problem. That’s a normalization problem. And it’s one of the most expensive patterns I see in leadership teams running on the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS).
How Teams Drift Into Tolerance
Nobody decides to tolerate issues. It happens gradually.
In the first quarter, the issue is raw. It’s uncomfortable to name. The room tenses up when someone puts it on the list. There’s energy around it, maybe even some healthy conflict. Good. That’s the system working.
Second quarter, it’s familiar. The team has had a few conversations about it. Maybe a To-Do got completed. Progress was made, or at least it felt like it. The urgency softens.
Third quarter, it’s furniture. It’s just part of the landscape. The team has built workarounds so effective that no one even registers them as workarounds anymore. What looks like operational stability from the outside is managed dysfunction from the inside.
The issue didn’t get solved. The team just got better at living with it. That’s a very different thing.
The Subtle Signs
The obvious signal is repetition. The same issue recurs from meeting to meeting. But normalization is sneakier than that.
Watch for these signs:
- The Level 10 Meeting moves around the issue instead of through it
- Discussions start strong but end without a real decision
- Ownership gets assigned, but everyone quietly understands it’s symbolic
- The team knows, collectively and privately, that this one isn’t going anywhere
And here’s what catches the sharpest teams: over-analysis masquerading as progress. The issue isn’t being ignored. It’s being studied. Mapped and discussed from every angle. Run through another framework before anyone commits to action.
Let’s be honest. That’s still avoidance. It just has better PR.
The motion feels productive, but the issue stays exactly where it was. And because something is always happening, another conversation, another layer of clarity, another round of alignment, nobody names the uncomfortable truth: nothing is actually changing.
This is exactly where most teams get stuck. They talk about issues, but they don’t solve them at the root.
In Issues: Remove Friction, Fast-Track Your Growth, and Ignite Your Greatness, we show how to shift from motion to resolution by using IDS the way it’s designed. When you solve the real issue, it doesn’t come back next week in a different form.
What It’s Really Costing You
Unresolved issues don’t sit quietly. They become anchors on your business.
The cost isn’t just the issue itself. It’s everything downstream:
- The decisions you can’t make while the root stays unresolved
- The team member who stops surfacing new issues because they’ve watched what happens to the ones already on the list
- The slow, silent erosion of belief that IDS actually works, not because the process is flawed, but because the team has quietly agreed to stop using it on the things that matter most
Here’s the question I’d put to your leadership team this week: What would actually change if this issue were solved for good?
Not managed. Not better understood. Not punted to the next quarter with a cleaner action item attached. Solved.
Most teams have a clear answer. They can see exactly what would open up. They just haven’t decided that getting there requires. And that decision is usually uncomfortable, which is exactly why the issue is still on the list.
The Starting Point
Your Issues List is trying to tell you something.
The items that keep reappearing aren’t failures of process. They’re invitations to lead differently.
Naming what you’ve normalized is the first move. Not analyzing it further. Not assigning another To-Do. Naming it, out loud, in the room, and deciding that this is the meeting where it gets resolved.
That’s where growth lives. Not in adding more to your plate, but in finally solving the thing that’s been weighing it down.
If this feels familiar, you’re not alone. Most leadership teams struggle to solve issues in a way that actually sticks.
That’s why we wrote Issues: Remove Friction, Fast-Track Your Growth, and Ignite Your Greatness.
Inside, you’ll learn how to:
- Solve root problems, not just symptoms
- Build the trust to debate openly and move forward together
- Run meetings that consistently solve issues instead of recycling them
- Help every leader on your team become a stronger problem-solver
Get your copy of Issues: Remove Friction, Fast-Track Your Growth, and Ignite Your Greatness and start solving issues at the root, today.
