The Simple Weekly Report That Fixes Agency Communication

Ask your team to describe how you manage and you probably won’t enjoy the answer.

Trusting, yes. Also distracted. Chaotic. Drawn to whatever’s new. Prone to shifting the priorities and then applying pressure when the shifted priorities aren’t met.

We see it differently, of course. We think we can see the whole board. Clients, billing, projects, revenue, who’s stretched and who isn’t. Some of that is even true. We’re just terrible at getting it out of our heads and into anybody else’s.

The bigger gap runs the other way.

Information doesn’t flow upwards

You delegate. You trust. Something slips, so you nudge. Then you prod. Your team responds to the nudging, because that’s the system they’ve been trained in: wait to be asked.

And the reason they dropped it is usually that you gave them too much. So you get frustrated and start checking email in the evening, on a Sunday, from a sun lounger. Which adds pressure, which causes more to slip.

The question worth sitting with is this. What information are you not getting that would make everybody’s life a little easier?

It’s almost always a boring regular report

Not a dashboard. Not a new tool. An email.

From your head of client services, or your PM, or your finance lead, or whoever owns the thing you keep checking on. Every Friday, or every couple of days, whatever the rhythm demands. It says what’s progressing, what’s about to be blocked, what’s slipping, and what they need from you.

It arrives whether or not there’s a problem. You reply sometimes. Not always.

That’s the whole intervention. And it does two things, only one of which is obvious.

The writing is the point

The first thing happens before you ever read it.

To write that email, they have to think. What are the priorities? What’s actually moving? What’s going to be a problem in a fortnight? What do I need from my boss, and have I asked for it?

That thinking doesn’t happen otherwise. Not because they’re incapable, but because they spend the day spinning plates, fighting fires and answering your questions, and nobody arrives at the strategic middle distance by accident.

The report is a forcing function. It makes them do the thinking that you would otherwise be doing on their behalf, badly, at 10pm.

The second thing is you

You’re informed. You can see progress. You chase less, because there’s nothing to chase. You know the deadlines. You plan your own week around what’s happening rather than what you’re assuming is happening.

And the ambiguity between you and them shrinks. Most dropped balls live in that gap. They assumed you knew. You assumed they’d handle it. Neither of you said anything.

Look for it everywhere

Once you see the pattern it turns up all over the business.

Your bookkeeper sends a list of invoices to be raised. In building that list, they look properly at scopes and projects, and the invoicing gets more accurate.

Your project manager sends the deadline report. In building it, they check the deadlines. Balls stop dropping.

Your sales manager sends the numbers every three days. In building them, they notice they’re behind on calls. So they make the calls.

None of these reports are really for you. The value is created before anyone hits send.

So which one aren’t you asking for?