Welcome back to English for management and leadership. In this video, I'd like to focus on that status report that Elizabeth was building for her boss, Don. Did you notice how she received reports from her team and used that information to compile a condensed version of the information for the boss? Let me start this lesson with a little story. For the past two years, during summer vacations, I drove my two daughters across the country to visit two different sets of grandparents, with stops along the way to see tourist, scenic, and historical sites, to visit friends, and to swim in a lot of hotel pools. Every day, when we'd get back in the car, I would add clothespins to a ribbon that stretched across the back of the front seats. Each clothespin had the name of a city of town that we would be passing through, each about a two hour drive from the other. As we passed one of the towns, I would announce hey, we're in Albuquerque. And my daughters would move the clothespins from one side of the ribbon to the other. And so they could see during the long drive,, how the trip was progressing. And it significantly reduced the number of times I heard, are we there yet? In your role, you are like the driver. Your boss has set a destination, but has given you control over the details of the trip. Much like Don told Elizabeth, launch the Biodent toothpaste, but she will be making the decisions of how to do so. As the driver, you determine the best route to take. You set the speed limit with some influence from speed limit regulations. You determine how long you're going to drive today. You decide where you're going to stay, and what you're going to see. You have to know when to stop for gas. You have to be following a map, and you have to stop for lunch. But even though you are responsible, and taking care of all these items, your boss, busy with other responsibilities, still wants to know, how much longer? Are we there yet? If you get pulled over for speeding, your boss is going to ask, what happened? Or if you get a flat tire. Do you need my help? That ribbon is used with my daughters is a lot like a status report for your boss. Ideally, it gives them the information they want before they need to ask you for it. A status report is a regular consistent summary of the most important details of a project. A good status report distills thousands of hours of work into a 30 second read. Where are we? How are we doing? Where are we going next? A status report may vary from organization to organization. But most status reports contain the following key elements. The first one is the summary. Think of this as the dashboard of your car, which gives you information about how fast or slow you're going, how much gas you have, maybe what direction you're going, the conditions outside, and the temperature of your engine. In much the same way, a summary of a status report communicates the overall health of your project. Many status reports use a color-coded system to communicate that health. Like a dashboard in a car, if you run low on gas, a warning light will appear. In a status report, information can be communicated through a green, yellow, or red color. Green means on-target and healthy, yellow means an area that's not meeting targets and may be an area of concern. Red is alarming and needs immediate attention. Another method I've seen used is a weather report system, sunny, partly cloudy, cloudy, thunderstorms. The second element of a status report is the key accomplishments that took place during the reporting period. What did you and your team do? If you think in terms of that ribbon that I used on our cross country drives, the clothes pins that were moved to the right during the drive, would be the key accomplishments. In other words, these are the completed items. The third element of a status report is the upcoming deliverable. The deliverables are those items that will be completed in the near term. In other words, those are the clothespins still on the left side of the ribbon. Finally, the fourth element of a status report includes any additional comments or concerns that your boss needs to know about. Usually these would be explanations of yellow or red items from the dashboard. They may be requests for needed support from your boss, such as assistance for removing barriers to success. This might be a department head who's being difficult, or an increased budget need to add staff, or new technology that's taking longer than expected to get up to speed. Offer solutions to these problems. Whatever you do, be upfront with your boss about the problem areas. No one likes surprises. Keep in mind the benefit to you of writing status reports. First, it keeps your boss up-to-date on projects. Making it easier for him or her to communicate with senior management. Making your bosses job easier makes your job more secure. Secondly, it forces you to think about how much time you spent actually working on the project, aside from countless meetings, sessions with colleagues and other distractions. It quantifies the work you do. Sometimes, unfortunately, performance is based on your boss's perception of the work you do. Having your performance consistently documented is good for both performance reviews and for any resume updating you to do. Let's review the takeaways for this lesson. Your status report is a proactive response to the question, are we there yet? It condenses hours of work into a 30 second read that answers the questions, where are we, how are we doing, where are we going next? And maybe even, do I need to get involved? It contains four elements. A summary dashboard, key accomplishments, upcoming deliverables, and concern areas for mitigation. The status report benefits you because it allows you to have more autonomy, since your boss doesn't have to keep coming to you for answers. Later on, we'll show you an example of a status report, so you can see what one might look like. Thanks for watching English for management and leadership.
