Executives do not listen to project updates the way project managers think they do. They are not trying to understand your project. They are scanning for three answers: do I need to worry, do I need to decide something, and can I trust this person with the rest.
Most project managers prepare for an executive the way they would prepare for their own team: the full history, every task, all the technical detail. It feels thorough, but it makes the executive do the sorting, and to them that looks like you cannot tell what matters. That is how good project managers get tuned out.
In this video, I cover:
- The three questions behind every executive update, and why the third one shapes your career
- Answering first, and the one-sentence test for any update
- Reporting outcomes instead of effort
- Translating technical issues into customers, money, dates and risk
- Why you never guess, and why you never let an executive be surprised in front of their peers
- A five-minute checklist to run before any executive update
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Talking to executives is learned by doing it. Inside The Eddie System you work through governed projects across many industries in a live PMO environment, and in Live PMO mode you present your project at phase gates and answer the questions an executive sponsor would ask.
