Level up your Stakeholder Updates

In this age of rapid delivery, agility and incremental release of value, it seems a bit counterproductive to be talking about status reports and status review meetings.

In recent years I’ve been informed a few times by project teams that “we don’t do status updates as we’re going Agile”. They soon realise that being Agile isn’t an excuse for not communicating to the key players in your circle.

Whether we like it or not, there’s no going away from the need to update those who fund your new project, ensuring they remain supportive, and that problems are made visible so they can be resolved as soon as possible.

If anything, the increasingly faster pace of releasing change causes a need for even more visibility of status, but that doesn’t mean it has to always be a formal meeting with extensive paperwork to boot.

Meetings for the sake of meetings are a drain on time, and reporting for reporting’s sake is a waste of energy.

As the rate of change is ever increasing, I advocate for concise status meetings only when necessary, with highly visual on-demand reporting that can be consumed as team members and various stakeholders need. This allows up-to-date information to be available without excessive overhead.

I admit, for dashboard information to be so readily available, the team tracking must be kept regularly up-to-date, and efficient tools become a necessity.

Software such as Jira, ClickUp, Microsoft Project or Smartsheet all have useful tracking tools, which can make for effective status reporting accompanied by timely dialogue.

A good balance between reporting and discussions, with the right frequency relative to the size and scale of each initiative, can make or break the success of a project team when it comes to their ability to respond to threats and resolve problems at pace.

Keep reading for more on how to get the best out of your status reviews.

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I asked a few people over the years for their status review tips, and also reflected on what has worked for me over the years. Here are my top points to consider.

Do your homework

Check the basic facts are in place and accurate, such as having planning information correct, dates aligned, actions followed up from previous meetings, and of course that the overall project or initiative status is accurately reflected in your reporting before any status meeting takes place.

Another point I always consider is whether any requests for decisions actually need to wait for the status / steering meeting, or wether they can be obtained sooner. If a decision at a status or stakeholder meeting is needed, it’s always important to let the participants know beforehand, so they don’t walk in to decision requests unprepared.

Alternatively, if a decision isn’t dependant on the meeting, you’ll appear much more proactive if you have received the decision beforehand.

Get your points across

I’ve attended many status review meetings, steering sessions and check-points, only to observe that attendees were just going through the motions and holding a meeting because it was scheduled, even though there was no new information to provide that couldn’t otherwise be sent in an email.

If there is no actual need to bring a group of people together, and alternative measures are agreed instead, such as a status email or dashboard, ensure they are very clear and easy to digest without raising many questions.

In addition, t’s always worth identifying what the key messages are during a status review discussion so that you can ensure these messages are the focus of the meeting and the discussion doesn’t turn into irrelevant banter, or worse, a discussion that leaves you open to unexpected questions you don’t have the answers for.

Anticipate questions

Speaking of unexpected questions, It’s useful to rehearse the session by yourself or with another team member, and whilst you’re doing that, think about the questions your audience may want to ask whilst you are giving the updates.

Capture these questions and make sure you have a solid answer for them before the meeting in case the questions re asked. This helps you to exude confidence during the meeting, which in turn can give your audience increased confidence in you and your team.

Mind your Language!

If you’re involved in highly specialized activities such as developing software, data analysis or marketing, you’ll have a level of expertise that your audience may not. It’s very tempting to use jargon specific to your area of expertise, which can lead to alienating your audience.

Always explain complex or technical terms, and only use them if necessary. Overall, keep language simple, straight to the point, and actionable.

A picture says a thousand words

No mater how analytical or astute people on the receiving end of status updates can be, they will usually appreciate visual story telling.

Most stakeholders in project / programme status meetings tend to have many other commitments to worry about, and are therefore time poor, so it pays to make information more digestible for them.

It’s usually wise to use graphs, tables or images to get your message across much more quickly and also keep your audience engaged.

Key visual messages that depict progress and status can include:

• Visualising spend vs imagine budget and whether you are trending to remain in budget.

• Testing dashboards with defect rates and defect completion progress.

• Number of features completed within given time vs. expectation.

Be open about the threats

Risks and issues are typically discussed in status review meetings, however they can be covered almost as a way of highlighting the same old obvious possibilities that could derail progress e.g. “a risk that the work could take longer due to being more complex than we thought…“

If updates are used for low value reporting like this, attendees could see this as a way for you to simply cover your back, or waste their time, rather than presenting real problems with real solutions.

Discussing threats or blocking matters is a good way for someone running an initiative to really consider the material threats to success, and then show possible suggestions to resolve them. Only then should you use your audience to seek other ideas or validate yours. Never come to status meetings with more senior members without at least some ideas of how to solve the problems.

Celebrate the wins

One of the common failings about people who work in change initiatives is that they can be so focussed on delivering the project or main releases, that they can easily overlook successes along the way.

There is always time to acknowledge individual and team success when giving status updates, if you don’t do it, nobody else will. Acknowledging smaller releases or key problems being solved is also an opportunity to showcase the team’s capabilities, and therefore increase stakeholder confidence in your success.

Be positive

Stakeholder meetings or status updates can easily fall into the trap of being too formal, too clinical or too serious. Use these sessions as a chance to show positivity, the right amount of high energy and a chance to build connections with your audience.

Doing so helps you to resolve threats more collaboratively and usually more proactively.

Open dialogue

It can be helpful to allow time for questions and feedback. This might be difficult to take early on, but helps in many ways by;

• Increasing your ability to understand your stakeholders better, and therefore tailor future status updates to address their concerns or preferences more effectively.

• Enabling you to build a better rapport between participants.

• Helping you to address blind spots across the initiatives you are working on.

Consistency

Maintaining regular communication is invaluable, even if it’s only one-way like a downloaded report, or even if you feel that your stakeholders are less interested. I can assure you that if things start to go wrong, they will definitely show an interest, and one of the questions they are likely to ask is whether they have been made aware of the potential problems in advance.

Consistency doesn’t have to imply the same status meeting at the same scheduled time, it could be a dashboard or email or even an informal conversation with a specific key stakeholder.

The key is to keep dialogue open and ensure individuals who have a notable stake in your work are kept regularly up-to-date, at the right level of detail and with minimal time consumed.

You’ve seen my key tips on what to include in your status reporting etiquette, here are some common mistakes you should avoid at all costs.

Too much detail

I’ve learned the hard way that to much information does not make for a great experience for the people receiving your updates.

Too much information in emails, reports or verbally can cause your audience to lose interest, get confused or leave you open to questions that may raise unnecessary concerns.

Stick to the level of detail required for the audience, what you know of their communications preferences and the scheduled time.

Blaming others

Nobody likes a show off, so whist it’s good to celebrate team and individual successes with an element of humility, it’s not so good to let everyone know how great you think you are.

Even worse than this is passing blame for failures onto others. This let’s people believe you may be untrustworthy and possibly not a team player. Even if your progress is blocked by a representative of another team, you can say so factually without making the other person appear to be the bad guy.

Sugarcoating

Call a spade a spade. When there is an issue or something likely to go wrong without, it’s important to call it out. letting it fester, or playing down a problem to avoid confrontation, will only make matters worse and create more work later on.

Not recording actions or key decisions

When key decisions are made, or if someone promises they’ll do something, it’s always good to put it on record to gently remind people about what they agreed to.

There are so many moving parts to delivering meaningful change, and so much will get lost in translation as a result. Make it easier for you and everyone else by capturing the key events, decisions an actions. It also saves time by avoiding the need to cover old ground later on if people are unsure if a matter was resolved.

This point seems trivial and basic, but you will be surprised how often such basics are not followed, causing inefficiency and unnecessary anxiety.

Poor time management

Simply put, if you can’t keep your meetings or reporting schedules to time, it can be perceived that you may struggle to lead your teams to deliver high quality products and services on time.

Make every effort to keep to time in status meetings, even if it means deprioritizing lower value agenda items, or rearranging a separate time for targeted discussions with a smaller group on specific items.

There will be occasions where it’s right to keep a status meeting going over its allotted duration, especially when a key matter needs to be resolved urgently, and it would be counter productive to reschedule for a later date. Such occasions should be infrequent though, in order to respect everyone’s time.

References

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