Yikes – the tower of leadership, deciding to get into your corner of the world. Not great. Not terrible either. Giving updates to leadership often is a forcing function of action, painful at times, but effective. This magic somehow brings uncooperative parties to the table, accelerates the need for a plan, and drives others to complete their actions swiftly and without error.

All for the sake of looking good. (or at a minimum, not looking bad)

Being in an IT role, you must identify the power of the “LT Update” – as well as the curse. The sheer mention of it will send bad ideas running for the hills – it will also sort out the confident from those who “have ideas that make them look smart”. Very rarely will someone suggest a bad idea and decide to defend it in front of the dreaded gauntlet that is the “LT Update” – those who do, likely will be branded with that bad idea for a while.

So, how do you handle it? When your boss comes to you on Monday (or worse a Thursday evening) and tells you that an LT update is needed by the end of the week – what do you do? Panic? Immediately set your status to “Do-not-Disturb” and cry under your desk?

Personally, I’ve never had a problem giving updates to leadership teams much higher in the chain than my current rank – If you ever find me in a pub after COVID (if they even exist), I have some good stories I’m not willing to write about. I’ve been mostly blessed with good leadership, at times, even great. Great leaders have the ability to remove the anxiety from any conversation and help you convey your message. But for every great leader, there are two equally bad ones – leaders who have been promoted as a result of tenure and networking, not as a result of performance.

For this post, let’s focus on good leaders – I feel like I can write a book on dealing with bad leaders and identifying them, maybe I’ll write about that in a future post.

Below is how I personally think about building an “LT Update” – and I realize many of you will stop reading right here (which is fine, come back when you’re crying under your desk).

My personal opinion is that it is important to be honest and open. I made a decision a long time ago, I was going to practice something I call (or communicate as) “radical transparency.” This means to me (probably another whole blog post) that if you ask me my opinion, in any setting, I will give you my thoughts without filtering the content (omitting points or views because they are unpopular). This requires you to master the art of framing, and I like to think I’m decent there. This means that when I interact with people, the framing of my message changes – but never the content. The more I sit here and think about it, this should be my next post, I’m guessing it will be.

For my manager (if you’ve ever been my manager, this may ring a bell), a problem might be “an absolute waste of time, unachievable, or provide absolutely no value for maximum effort.” It’s important to be transparent with your direct supervisor for two reasons:

1. They need to know how you feel
2. They need a scale with more than Great-Okay-Terrible (there are varying degrees in each one)

For number two, I give them as many notches on that scale as I can – so they can easily judge how I feel, as well as understand my interpretation of any particular scenario/situation. My notches are pinned by colorful language and common sense metaphors – typically landing my view points. This isn’t the same messaging tactic I would use with someone above my bosses boss – ever. You need to frame it, so your point remains – but your communication style (framing) meets expectations.

So now you’re done crying under your desk…well, if you need a few more minutes I can wait.

Step 1: What do you want to say?

This is super important for every presentation you’ll ever give, but it is probably the most important for this “LT Update.” Once you master the update, you might be able to think about it versus writing it down – but write it down. Open up OneNote (or Notepad :)), write down your high level talk track – I would think about it something like this:

1. Introduce the team (make others awesome right?)
2. Why are we doing this?
3. How are we doing it
4. How is it going?
5. Where do we need help?
6. Next steps from here

For me and my experience – bullets number two, four, and five are where you should focus a majority of your effort. Bullet number five, giving leaders the feeling like they can do something to help you obtain your objectives (and ultimately the organizations) is key. They are the big dogs, the queens of industry, let them wield their power to serve your goals. Otherwise they mind “find” things to do, which is counterproductive at best.

Also, ask yourself (or obtain from your LT) – what do they want status on? What do they want to know? Take those items and frame them into the list you’ve generated above – knowing when you’re going to hit those items, properly deferring conversation and maintaining control of the talk track.

Step 2: What do you want them to take away?

Also another important presentation preparation technique, but you need to decide – when the team (or people) you’re briefing think about this in a week, what do you want them to remember? Do you want them to think about the disaster that is the effort you’re helping to drive? Do you want them to check back in with your direct management teams to see how it’s going? Do you want them to schedule more time with you for a status update?

Write it down – right next to your talk track (if you’re in OneNote this is easy, notepad is harder):

1. This is a challenging project with a lot of unknowns
2. We have a firm path to get there – and we are on track
3. Team X is hindering our ability to move quickly, it’d be great if they weren’t.
4. Widget Y is a risk and may blow up in our face, you should be aware it could be a problem.

Step 3: Build the presentation

Build the presentation – thats right – build it. Use the talk track you’ve created above as a frame and the points you want to land and build your content. General rules:

1. If you’re slide looks like a Hardy Boys novel – reconsider
2. If you’re using mid-2000’s animations – reconsider
3. If you’re building more slides than can be explained at a 4min/slide rate – reconsider

Step 4: Review

Now comes the hard part, you’ve built a presentation that is one-sided (you giving status) versus a conversation. Soliciting feedback from those you’re presenting to is important for two reasons:

1. Confirmation of understanding
2. Confirmation of direction/path

You also need look at your key points you want them to walk away with. You’re going to need to reframe everything to support those points. Maybe you edit your key points while you’re building your preso (yikes hate that term), but you need to support your “walk away points.”

You also need to ask yourself the following:

1. Does this even matter to the people I’m sharing it with? – This is important, putting a ton of detail makes you feel like you’ve delivered more, but in reality what you’ve done is made those key points harder to find. Go through the deck and for each thing you have on there, literally ask yourself – Will they even care?
2. Are the asks they made to you initially and the status clear? – Nothing is more frustrating for anyone than asking for something and getting something else. So, look at the items you’ve given “status” on, is the current status and next action item clear? Did you cover all of the items they’d requested? What did you miss?
3. Is there anything in here that is going to cause alarm bells? – You’re briefing management, not a team status. While a comment like “this is likely to fail – more status next week” is fine for your team in context, a statement like that in front of management is likely going to cause alarms and derail the conversation. Be deliberate about what you say, and what you don’t. Be transparent, but may be say something like – “this path seems viable, but with a high risk of failure – Alternatives exist, no action”

Step 5: Knock it out of the f***’in park –

Everyone prepares for these things differently, I personally ask myself questions I think would be asked and have started thinking about responses. I don’t get nervous, because just like us – leaders “put their pants on one leg at a time.” The only pieces of advice I can give you is:

1. Make it a conversation – Each set of points you land, stop and check for understanding. “So this is why we are going down this path, does that make sense? Does anyone have any feedback?” Getting questions like this in bits and pieces will help confirm understanding and help confirm to leaders that they understand. Briefings going south quickly when unanswered questions and lack of understanding cause people to break in and take control. Grab and maintain control.
2. Get positive reinforcement on the decisions you’ve made thus far – When explaining the “why,” ask those you are briefing to confirm your thinking and direction. Be prepared to discuss alternate paths and why the one you choose is a better option (based on facts, not conjecture). Be prepared to be wrong.
3. Ask for help – Even if its small – ask for something. It could be something as simple as “we are moving quickly and this team may not be able to keep up with the pace. If you could help reinforce to your peers the importance here, that would be great.”
4. Don’t ask for too much – They are your boss, they’ve done their time in the trenches doing what you’ve done (in theory) – Don’t make their job your project. It won’t go well.

And thats it – All I have to say about the LT Update – Good luck and god’s speed!

MC