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Status reports are comforting.
They create the illusion of control.
They reduce complexity into neat colours and percentages.
And they lie.
Not maliciously. Systemically.
Most status reports reflect what’s easiest to measure, not what matters. Schedule variance. Budget burn. Completed tasks.
They rarely show:
Decision latency
Dependency risk
Stakeholder misalignment
Unresolved scope ambiguity
Green doesn’t mean safe.
Red doesn’t always mean danger.
The most dangerous projects I’ve seen were consistently green — right up until they weren’t.
A good delivery leader reads between the lines. They interrogate assumptions. They listen for what isn’t being said.
Status reports don’t fail projects.
Unquestioned status reports do.
Status reports are comforting.
They create the illusion of control.
They reduce complexity into neat colours and percentages.
And they lie.
Not maliciously. Systemically.
Most status reports reflect what’s easiest to measure, not what matters. Schedule variance. Budget burn. Completed tasks.
They rarely show:
Decision latency
Dependency risk
Stakeholder misalignment
Unresolved scope ambiguity
Green doesn’t mean safe.
Red doesn’t always mean danger.
The most dangerous projects I’ve seen were consistently green — right up until they weren’t.
A good delivery leader reads between the lines. They interrogate assumptions. They listen for what isn’t being said.
Status reports don’t fail projects.
Unquestioned status reports do.
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Ben Webb - Project Manager
Ben Webb - Project Manager
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