Category: Progress Updates

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.

I’m coining a new term – FaaF. It sounds like the word my dad would use to describe something unimportant, but now: FaaF means Friction as a Feature. 

As we all know, automating mundane, repetitive tasks, frees up valuable time and mental bandwidth for more strategic work. ML / AI has taken automation to new, impressive levels with ever-increasing accuracy, but leaders must now try to determine the merits of it’s efficiency gains.

While there is an ever-growing list of things that we CAN automate, it is important to consider what we SHOULD automate. This is where Friction as a Function comes into play. 

Let’s use the example of a leader at a large tech company. Oftentimes, they will rely on a PMO who spends hours a week chasing updates from initiative teams to build out a progress report that is shared with leadership. 

This PMO is often well-paid former management consultants. These updates are critical in helping teams and leaders stay aligned, but chasing them is a manual and tactical process, taking time that the PMO could instead use on removing roadblocks, driving efficiencies, helping initiative teams prepare for presentations, etc. 

Chasing and compiling these updates is a great example of friction that should be automated. 

However, creating the content of these updates is a good example of FaaF (Friction as a Feature). Ensuring initiative teams sit down weekly (or biweekly, monthly, etc.) and manually type out a short account of their progress, roadblocks, and next steps causes them to reflect, to think critically, and to hold themselves accountable regularly. This is good friction, or Friction as a Feature.

Of course the friction should be proportional – you don’t want initiative teams to spend hours providing intricate details each week in a beautifully manicured presentation if they can give a useful, pragmatic update in 5 minutes. 

It is the job of a leader to determine when to remove and when to allow friction, and how much friction is enough. Automation should be embraced where it truly adds value (like chasing progress updates), freeing up teams to focus on more strategic tasks (like executing on an initiative, and thinking critically about its health and trajectory).

As you review and redesign your workflows, ask yourself not just what you should automate, but where Friction is a Function, not a bug.