Justin Maust, Expert EOS Implementer and IDS master, was two sessions into coaching Jason Lippert, CEO of a five-billion-dollar company, when Jason set him straight at a Cracker Barrel in Elkhart, Indiana. Justin showed up expecting an hour. Jason told him their real decisions — the ten-to-fifty-million-dollar acquisition calls — get made in fifteen-minute increments.
That kind of decisiveness — knowing enough, and trusting your team enough, to make the call and move on — is the whole case for IDS: Identify, Discuss, Solve, the issues solving track built into every Level 10 meeting for turning issues into decisions that stick.
Justin Maust walked our community through seven disciplines to make IDS stronger, in a live session with Samantha Ngo and Tawnee Grammatico from the Strety team. If you need the basics of how IDS fits into your L10 agenda first, our complete Level 10 meeting guide covers that — this session picks up from there.
Watch the session Justin Maust — Expert EOS Implementer. Over 1,200 client session days across more than 115 entrepreneurial leadership teams, plus keynote speaking and executive coaching work as a certified John Maxwell Team trainer.
Hosted by Samantha Ngo — Head of Marketing, Strety, and Tawnee Grammatico — Partner Manager, Strety.
VIDEO
Four discoveries that strengthen IDS Justin frames the whole session around one goal: better decisions, followed by faster follow-through. Four discoveries get a leadership team there.
First, clarity of vision — your V/TO, Rocks, Scorecard, and documented processes — turns decisions into defaults, so a team already knows what to do instead of debating it fresh every week.
Second, real clarity breaks are what surface good issues in the first place: on one flight home, Justin used a sixty-minute clarity break to surface 81 real issues across the companies he was running, then sent the list straight to his team the moment he landed.
Third, a short set of bad habits — ruling by consensus, refusing to enter the danger, waiting for the perfect answer — slows down teams that don’t realize they’re doing it.
Fourth, not every decision deserves the same speed: a non-fatal call and a fifteen-year engineering project call for very different paces.
For the ten commandments behind good decision-making, Justin points to Gino Wickman’s free ebook, Decide!
Seven disciplines to strengthen IDS If your team’s IDS time regularly runs long, or your issues list feels more like a complaint box than a place where real problems get solved, the disciplines below are worth trying before your next L10.
Choose to make speed a habit . Tell the team at the start of the meeting that you’re moving with intent — no tangents, no politicking, issues solved with an action or a decision. Justin says this takes fifteen to thirty seconds and sets the tone for the entire hour.Decide who should solve it . A leadership team spending its time on a $25-an-hour issue is a bigger loss than the issue itself. If someone on the team can own it, hand it over and move on.Time-block your to-dos . IDS only pays off if the to-dos it produces get done. Justin recommends carving out dedicated time within 24 hours of the meeting to close them out, rather than letting them compete with the rest of the week.Use the facilitation phrases that keep things moving . “What’s the root of this issue?” and “are we ready to discuss for solutions?” sound almost too simple, but teams that skip them can take two to five times longer to reach a real solve.Schedule individual time to build your issues list . Ten to fifteen minutes before the meeting to review and sort what’s on the list beats showing up and trying to think of issues on the spot — anything that belongs to another department or a personal list gets routed there before the meeting even starts.Mentally prep the team like an Olympic athlete right before IDS . A quick reset right before the meeting — we’re calling tangents, we’re solving with an action or a decision today — puts everyone in the same gear before issue one comes up. Commit to auditing and training . Justin’s biggest waste to avoid: leaders who were never trained on how to set a Rock, run an L10, or build a real Scorecard end up checking the box that they’re “running on EOS” while the Rocks underneath stay weak.Watch the full session for more on all seven disciplines, plus the Q&A that follows. Justin fields real questions on parallel-tracking to-dos, filtering low-level issues without shutting down feedback, and when a big issue should become a Rock instead of a to-do.
Put the issue on the clock Justin’s favorite proof point for what disciplined IDS can do comes from a client in the restaurant and hospitality industry. When COVID hit, they moved from weekly Level 10s to daily ones, with to-dos due in 24 hours instead of seven days. They became the fastest-transitioning team in his practice and reached profitability faster than any other client that year.
Justin’s own illustration of the payoff: move from five issues solved per L10 to seven, and that’s a 40% jump — about two extra issues a week, a hundred more a year, from one team alone. Layer in a few department L10s running the same discipline, and his math lands north of 400 additional issues solved across a year.
For an issue that won’t die, Justin’s fix is blunt: put it on the clock. Ten minutes, no exceptions — most issues don’t need the extra twenty.
Run a stronger IDS in Strety Strety’s Level 10 agenda builds IDS in as one of seven pre-set sections, each with its own timer — a small way to keep Justin’s ten-minute rule closer to a habit than an aspiration. Calling out a tangent gets easier too, thanks to the Tangent button built into Strety’s L10 tool . Hitting it pops up a goofy GIF, keeping things light so no one feels put on the spot.
Try Strety free for 30 days and see how the right EOS software will make your IDS stronger and bring tangible growth.
