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How To Create Status Reports That Work?

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Status reports that work

Status reports are often the most “filtered out” emails, ending up in a folder that never gets opened. But that doesn’t mean the stakeholders are not interested in the status… they just hate the way it is reported!

3-Speed Status Reports

From my experience across a wide range of stakeholders, information is often expected at 3 different speeds.

  1. On-demand (fast) – get the information when they need it, without having to contact anybody
  2. Concise (slow) – get them the information in a way they can easily digest
  3. Details as needed (slowest) – they can go into finer details as needed

Often, preference is given to #1 or #2, with #3 being used for information that they care about (e.g., a big failure or escalation)

About 80-85% of stakeholder expectations are addressed by one of these 3 modes.

As someone responsible for reporting status, like a project manager, it becomes important to address these modes.

How do you do that?

The Reporting Sweet Spot!

Here’s a recommendation that works with most. However, you must understand the expectations and tailor them for any specific needs.

Status reports that work

3 recommended ways to report information that is proven to work are:

  1. Information radiators / Dashboards – on-demand, single-page view of status and visualization of key metrics
  2. TLDR Summary – a condensed summary of not more than 6 bullet points that highlight important aspects and key messages
  3. Double-click Reports – a detailed report, not more than 2 pages, that has a double-click of key messages in the TLDR summary

Also, include a specific section that calls out actions for the stakeholder – it can be an approval or have them enable a smooth progress.

Here’s a sample email structure that you can use – covering all of the above:

Sample email status report

I hope these tips help you make the status reports useful, once again! Cheers…

How To Be Good At Negotiation

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Oxford Dictionary describes negotiation as a discussion aimed at reaching an agreement. But you and I know that is a lot more complex than that.

Not all of us, especially nerdy engineers, enjoy negotiations. However, to be a successful tech leader, you need to master this art.

Whether it is prioritizing features for the next release or convincing a top engineer to join your team – good negotiation is vital.

In this issue, I will share two things:

  1. Negotiation tips from Chris Voss’ bestseller – Never Split the Difference
  2. Framework to plan your next Negotiation meeting

Negotiation tips from “Never Split the Difference”

former FBI negotiator. I can never do justice to the book in a few bullet points – I strongly recommend you get a copy and read it if you are interested in the topic.

But I will try to summarize the key takeaways here:

  • A good negotiation starts with listening. Make it about the other person, validate their emotions, and establish trust in the conversation
  • Use mirroring to encourage the other person to empathize and create a bond with you. A good technique is to repeat the last 3 critical (or important) words the other person just said, which helps in a stronger connection
  • Watch your voice tone as it makes a difference too. Some example tones used by professional negotiators are late-night DJ, playful, professional, and assertive
  • Labeling is a technique to validate the other person’s emotion by giving it a name and acknowledging it. It often starts with “It sounds like… It feels like… It seems like…” and describe their emotional state
  • Don’t just focus on a “Yes”. Use “No” tactically to eliminate options that are not relevant or interesting to both parties
  • Before getting to a “Yes”, you need to get the other party to say “That’s right”. You can do that by a good summary of their expectations and emotional state, and get an affirmation. This takes you one step closer to closing the deal

You can read a detailed summary of the book on Shortform (paywall).

Now that you have some tips, let’s look at a template to prepare for the next negotiation.

Negotiation prep template

Please note this is not a one-size-fits-all template for all negotiations. But it can be a good starting point for most.

#1 Figure out what you want

  1. What do you want to achieve in the negotiation? (your end goal, e.g., securing a job offer)
  2. What is it you want more of? (key differentiator, e.g., at least a 30% salary raise)
  3. What are the issues over which you will be negotiating? (e.g., salary, location, hybrid mode, stock options)
  4. What are the potential agreement options for each issue?
  5. What is the relative or weighted contribution of each option to your final decision?
  6. What is your reservation price and alternatives for your negotiation? (a reservation price is the least favorable point at which you can accept a negotiation)
  7. Which factors influence your stance the most and why?

#2 Figure out what your counterpart wants

  1. What problem of theirs will your proposal solve?
  2. What are your counterpart’s goals in the negotiation?
  3. What are their likely issues?
  4. What are their likely interests and why?

#3 Develop your negotiation strategy

  1. How will you gather the additional information you need?
  2. What information do you still need to assess?
  3. What are any potential holes in your strategy?
  4. What are your sources of power? (e.g., a skill that is very rare in the market)
  5. What strategies and tactics will you employ to achieve your goals, taking into account the preferences, goals, and strategies that your counterpart is likely to employ?
  6. Will you make the first offer? (It is important to decide as the negotiation will generally pivot around this)

I hope you have some solid tips and a template to rock your next negotiation. Often, this skill helps at better decision-making as well.

If you have any additional tips, feel free to share it as comments!

Become a Better Decision Maker

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Decision Making

As a tech leader, you’ll make decisions multiple times daily. Some of these can be simple decisions and others more impactful.

Leadership decisions impact everyone working in your team, so it is critical that you have proven tools in your arsenal.

There are two effective decision-making tools.

  1. Decision matrix
  2. Decision trees

Let’s start with the first one.

#1 Decision Matrix

A decision matrix is a decision-making table you can use to evaluate different options

It is a fairly straightforward tool when you have a set of choices and criteria to evaluate them.

How to create a decision matrix?

  • Define your goal or problem statement
  • Make a list of options
  • Define the criteria against which each option must be evaluated
  • Assign weights to each criterion based on their importance (higher weight refers to higher importance)
  • Score each option against every criterion (thus creating a table or matrix)
  • Calculated weighted score for each option (by multiplying raw score with the weight for each entry)
  • Compare the total weighted score for options

The option with the highest weighted score is most probably the better decision to go with.

Here’s a sample decision matrix.

However, a decision matrix is not very useful when the options or criteria have relationships between them.

For example, a criterion might be more important when combined with another one and not otherwise.

That’s when you need to use a decision tree.

#2 Decision tree

A decision tree is a map of the possible outcomes of a series of related choices.

A decision tree has 3 components:

  • A decision node represents a decision to be made (typically represented as squares)
  • A chance node shows the probability of certain results (typically represented as circles)
  • An end node shows the outcome of a given path (typically represented as triangles)

Here’s a fairly simple decision tree that helps you decide what to do on a given day.

A trivial decision tree (https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/decision-tree)

How to draw a decision tree:

  1. Start with the major decision to be made (e.g., buy a house or not)
  2. Add chance and decision nodes to expand the tree
  3. Include the probability and the cost of each option, to make a numerical decision
  4. Continue to expand until each line reaches an end
  5. Calculate the expected value (EV) of each line. The one with the highest EV is the better path to take

Here’s an example decision tree for a company deciding on “what app to build next”.

A more complex decision tree (https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/decision-tree)

In the above example:

  • A company has to choose between 3 choices as their next app to build
    • Build a gaming app (costing $75k)
    • Build a productivity app (costing $50k)
    • Revamp existing app (costing $30k)
  • For each of these choices, there are forecasted revenues and the probability of achieving them
  • Expected value (EV) of revenue is the probabilistic sum of all choices in the path and the cost

Here’s an excellent article from Lucidchart on how to draw a decision tree.

One drawback is that decision trees can become more complex as you add more choices and probabilities. That’s when something like an influence diagram helps – but we will reserve it for another day.

Hopefully, this post has given you some solid tools for your next big decision.