No status reports, instead he "stochastically samples the system"
- Doesn't use status updates because he believes they are too refined by the
time they get to him. They are not ground truth anymore.
- Instead, anyone in the company can email him their "top five things" with
whatever is top of mind, and he will read it
- Estimates he reads 100 of these everyone morning
I'm a software guy who for 1.5 years worked for a hardware company with a relatively strict upwards-only information reporting structure. It wasn't even for secrecy, it's just that the people running it didn't understand the concept of collaboration at all. They were a mix of physicists and economists. Really smart but also, as it turned out, very 'square' people. It was a relatively small company, around 100 people.
It felt quite soul-crushing after a busy week to have to spend mental efforts writing up a report to someone 1-3 levels up... especially if you had no idea if it was ever read. And then do this every single week. If colleagues could read and learn from this effort it would make a lot more sense.
Never again. Went back to the relatively speaking much saner software world after that experience.
There are ways to test that.
You could just not submit the report, and see if anybody complains.
Or prepare the report, but intentionally corrupt the file before submitting it, and see if anybody complains.
Or prepare the report, and in it ask if anyone is actually reading it, and ask that they contact you if they are.
I admit I never had the guts to submit a slide which asked if anyone was reading it. It did cross my mind.
(It was a Microsoft-by-default-company, as many small hardware/research-oriented companies often are, I guess.
There was also that one week epic fight needed to get approval to run MacOS/Linux in the new "software department".)
Facts. I worked in a place where one my primary work outputs was a weekly high-stakes status document, and boy this document was refined, and agonized over, and wordsmithed, and revised, and re-revised, and softened, and distilled, and lenghtened, and shortened, until it was precisely the exact narrative that the VP and SVP needed to hear. By the time it went through the hands of dozens of engineering managers and was submitted, it was far, far divorced from reality. Then, rinse and repeat next week. I don't know if/how leadership had a clue what was really happening.