Status Theater

Status meetings and reports are a time-honored tradition in the corporate world.

Useful and effective status reports and meetings consider two important topics:

1. Who’s in the room (or reading it)?
2. What’s the real status?

Who’s in the room directs the content. What do they care about and why? The CEO doesn’t likely care about how many lines of code your team wrote last week, but they probably care about whether you hit the release date.

What’s the real status gives them the information they need. Accurate. Good stuff, but also the bad stuff.

It’s that second one that the reporters get hung up on. Because of the first one.

If you’re the one in the room who’s consuming the status, consider your attitude, the way you communicate, and the way you make the status reporters feel.

If you don’t, all you’re getting is status theater.