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Leaders: go get the update yourself
A VP downloads data into a spreadsheet,
creates charts,
pastes them into PowerPoint slides
with carefully worded bullet points,
and emails the file to twenty stakeholders.
Meanwhile the data keeps changing.
Repeat.
Leaders rely on these carefully curated presentations and reports to understand what’s happening on the ground. Teams spend countless hours preparing polished updates, sanitizing data, and crafting narratives that obscure rather than illuminate. This goes beyond PowerPoint theater: It’s a “push” model of information flow where teams periodically package and send updates upward, creating artificial barriers between leaders and the actual work being done.
This isn’t good enough. Reality demands more immediate, authentic visibility into operations. Real-time data is increasingly available, so organizations have an opportunity to flip this dynamic, pushing leaders to “pull” the information they need, when they need it, directly from the source.
Otherwise, teams of smart, highly paid people will continue to waste valuable time preparing and formatting updates instead of doing actual work.
Especially when paired with absolute targets and a traditional management hierarchy, the filtered nature of pushed updates means leaders lose touch with ground truth. They see only what teams choose to show them, often missing early warning signs or emerging opportunities.