9. How do you really know what is going on?

Question 9 is about visibility and quality of information: How do you really know what is going on?

Most projects setup steering committees and working groups and status reports to provide visibility of how things are going with financials and timeline and deliverables.

Despite that, it is amazing how many I’ve seen projects with all the right forums in place – steering committees, working groups, design authorities – that still miss fundamental issues. The problem is they ask the wrong questions or don’t challenge the narrative of “everything’s fine”.

Along with standard reporting lines, projects that do well also have informal channels that happen outside the reporting processes.

As the leader you need to be connected with people on the ground. This might be within the governance model but it more likely to be in the cadence of interactions you setup and the relationships you build.

You need to look for resonance across multiple sources. You need to be connected to who can recognise weak signals and are willing to follow them, rather than dismiss them as normal project noise. That requires experience, curiosity, and permission to probe.

One mantra I had when running a transformation is ‘we are making this up as we go along’. If everyone is trying to prove that they have it under control then you will be surprised in a bad way at some point.

If you feel something doesn’t seem right, but all the messages are that things are under control, then ask yourself: how do you really know what is going on?