Managing up
Bad news to leadership
Communicate adverse information without hiding, blaming or leaving people uncertain.
Telling leadership something has gone wrong.
The shape
- Reality
- Impact
- Cause
- Mitigation
- Next step
Why that order
Reality goes first. Leading with the cause reads as building a defence before the news, and by the time the news arrives it has already been discounted.
A worked example
We will not meet the Friday release date. The API integration is three days behind. The delay came from the vendor build. The team has started testing a temporary mock. I will confirm the revised date tomorrow.
What usually goes wrong
Softening the reality until the listener does not realise they have been told.
Built from
An application framework is a package. These are the reusable shapes inside it.
Mostly serves Message, and reaches into Presence and Intent.
A framework tells you what shape the answer takes. It cannot tell you whether shape is what you are short of, and for most people it is not. Which one is yours, and whether a framework is the right instrument at all, is what a Discovery Call is for.
Take the AssessmentOr read the whole glossary first.