Securing Progress Updates from Initiative Teams

In order for leaders to stay in-the-loop and other teams to stay aligned on the status of a transformation, initiative teams should provide regular updates on progress made, roadblocks, and next steps for their respective initiative. 

These progress updates should be quick and easy to write, and easy for others to understand. But despite being easy to complete, there will inevitably be times when a team will fail to provide their update on time. So what do you (as a leader, PMO, Transformation Lead, Consultant) do?

First off, make sure the team is reminded ahead of time. At least once or twice. Teams have a lot on their plate, most importantly in getting their work done. Some teams (e.g. in big tech, consulting, etc.) have people who spend a lot of their time chasing these updates – stratsuma automates the reminder process so you don’t have to go chasing. 

Secondly, do not fill out the update on the teams behalf. They need to be held accountable for their own work – filling it out on their behalf often leads to inaccurate reporting and shows the team that you will cover their slack. If you jump in and cover for the team, they are less likely to prioritize and own their reporting in the future. 

Lastly, after providing reminders, let the team “fail”, and then hold them accountable. With stratsuma, if a team fails to complete their report in time, their initiative is automatically marked as “Blocked”, and the consolidated update that is sent across the teams and to leaders states “Update not received by owner” (the owners name is listed by the initiative name).

If this happens, make sure a leader reaches out to the initiative owner to let them know that they rely on the update, and that they do not want to see a missed report again. If handled correctly, this is a mistake initiative teams should only ever make once.