The Leader's Guide To Push Reporting.
Get your team to present their work to you.
As a leader, it’s tempting to get involved in your team’s day-to-day so you can get visibility on what they're working on.
The impact is that it can come across as micro-managing their day. It’s also less time effective for you. It can take you away from the things you need to be working on.
What can be more powerful is creating a reporting dashboard (e.g. inputs you need regular updates on), sharing that format with your team, and asking them to present their work to you on a regular basis.
We call this ‘push reporting’.
A forced reporting deadline is useful for so many reasons.
It gives your team certainty they’re meeting expectations.
It gives you a regular opportunity to give them feedback.
You get visibility on what they’re working on.
You give them more autonomy and flexibility, and equally, you worry less on the day-to-day because you know you’ll be getting a useful update when the reporting is due.
The other benefit is that you get data you can share with stakeholders.
If you’re responsible for managing up or across other departments, you get data on what your team has produced regularly. You can forward that to people who need an update, without having to create a large report yourself.
Additionally, it’s a chance to regularly acknowledge successes. Studies have shown experiencing progress at work is the top contributor to engaged employees.
A forced deadline limits overwhelm and creates milestones, helping your team avoid burnout.
The quick guide to push reporting.
Push reporting asks your team to present updates to you, like a push notification.
Instead of ‘pulling’ these insights from them, you build into your workflow the requirement that they push their updates to you for feedback.
The nuance here is that these updates are batched and presented.
When they’re batched, you can both focus your time around this deadline, and when presented, they’re forced to improve their communication sharing updates.
What data to ask for?
The data you value the most.
Not their to-do list, the outputs that have value to your role. This helps them practise giving updates that are tailored to the person they’re presenting to.
Examples:
An update on the most important project they’re working on, and the things that are getting in the way.
An overview of client milestones, and anything they’re concerned about.
A highlight from the project to share with the executives, and what they’ll focus on next.
What they’re saying no to, to say yes to the most important things.
Your push report will look different according to their skill level.
For example, at the start of their time with you, they might share quite detailed updates as you get to know their capabilities.
As they get more senior and comfortable, all you’ll need is an overview.
What you need to fill that gap is consistent evidence of their abilities to prioritise. You can be a sounding board as they learn that skill.
You want your team to be autonomous, right?
The truth is very few people know how to manage their work when left to their own devices.
This means they get lured into ‘busy work’ or replying to emails, out of a craving to feel productive.
If you want higher quality work, and to train your team's brains to think more long term, there is another way: where people can have that same sense of accomplishment and a deadline, for a higher quality output.
Applying push reporting to leadership.
If you’re a boss, this concept of push reporting can work two ways:
You push updates to your clients/stakeholders, based on what they need and value most. You are pushing ‘up’. In this instance, you are asking ‘what does my stakeholder most value knowing’ and preparing accordingly.
Your team pushes updates to you, based on what you need and value most. They are pushing ‘up’, based on what intel you have asked them to prepare.
Push vs pull reporting.
When you randomly ask your team member for updates as you need them, you are ‘pull’ reporting. You are essentially not in control of when you need data.
To be a more consistent leader, you need to flip it.
By asking your team to present to you, you are getting them to ‘push’ report to you, at a predetermined time.
This cultivates a discipline on when and how you both choose to receive and process information. Meaning, less random questions, and more writing down of those questions to ask at the relevant time.
Your job as a boss is to minimise enthusiastic distractions.
Research tells us the average employee spends two hours recovering from distractions in an average work day.
Push reporting doesn’t get rid of that need to distract ourselves, but it does help us pause to ask ourselves, whether what we’re about to ask could be solvable without our team member, emailable, or batchable for when we meet.
Examples of what the actual push report could look like.
It can be a verbal update, with a few key points. It could also be:
A one pager of RAG (red, amber, green) status they speak to, that is also saved so you can refer to it if you need it for performance reviews.
An outline of the wins, losses and learnings for the week shared as a visual that is spoken to, and saved or shared afterwards.
An email with five dot points of achievements made that is sent to you, then talked through.
A formal presentation with slides that steps through the project, which is then sent to the big boss to increase their visibility.
A walk and talk sharing most urgent updates.
A system of ‘push reporting’ is good for everyone.
For you, it forces you to be more efficient, by focussing on batching your feedback and questions for your team member for that moment.
It’s an opportunity to provide feedback and provide you with a tangible summary to share with your stakeholders.
For your team, it’s a regular chance to get validation they’re on the right path, receive feedback, and reflect on their wins.
It encourages them to batch their questions for the time you are spending together, lowering the need to ask questions that are not urgent.
Could your leaders benefit from setting up a push reporting system?
If you’re wondering how to get your leaders to take more ownership, consider teaching them how to push report to you, and how to set their teams up to do the very same thing.
In our Essential Skills for Leaders Programme, we teach a module called Push Reporting that steps through this in detail.