WEEK 43 · GOVERNANCE

Run a State of the Team before anyone writes next year's plan.

The QBR tells leadership what the quarter's work added up to, and the people who did that work almost never hear it.

Submitted by Neil Watkins

Every quarter we tell leadership what the work added up to, and almost nobody tells the people who did it.

Our QBR went fine. The quarter's accomplishments lined up behind the strategy, and leadership got the version where every project connects to something the business values. Then the leaders in that room mentioned that a State of the Team hadn't happened in a while. They had just seen how broad the combined effort was, and our teams had not heard the entire story the accomplishments tell.

Each team knew its own piece. What none of them had seen was the amount of time and effort it took to transform an entire platform, which came to more than 76,000 hours of combined effort.

The calendar forced the issue. Budgeting for next year had already opened, and every department was starting its strategic plan. Asking people to plan next year's work when they had never seen what this year's work added up to felt backwards.

So we called one. Seventy-plus people got one hour, and all 11 section leaders told their team's story to the larger team, from network and platforms through operations, architecture and the security teams.

It was overwhelmingly positive and impactful. You could see it in the engagement, the questions, and the feedback.

Most of us treat the QBR story as cargo that only moves upward. We build it for leadership, polish it for leadership, and shelve it once leadership nods. The people closest to the work get the deadlines and the task list, and the narrative stays one level above them, where it does the least good.

The team writing next year's plan is the team that needs that story most. Our department strategic plans aren't finished. They are improving as a result, and that's the part that would have been invisible if the story had stayed in the QBR.

It's also the cheapest fix for the resistance I wrote about last week. People push back on what they don't understand, and nobody understands a strategy when all they ever saw was one slice.

So, here's the MondayMove

Before your teams write next year's plan, give everyone one hour in the same room and have every section leader tell their team's part of the story you told leadership.

They did the work, so let them hear what it bought before they plan the next round of it.

Friday Follow-Up

Five minutes is the first thing to break.

Where I expect a State of the Team to go sideways in your room, and the second meeting that makes the first one stick.

Submitted by Neil Watkins

October 23, 2026

MondayMove gives you one concrete action every Monday. FridayFollowUp closes the loop.

Each Friday, a short dispatch on what practitioners actually found when they ran the week's move: where they got stuck, what surprised them, and what to do next. Not sanitized case studies. Field notes. Practitioner to practitioner.

Monday's move asked you to hand the QBR story to the people who did the work, before they write next year's plan.

No field reports are in yet, so these are predictions, the places I expect this to break when you run it.

The clock goes first. Five minutes feels generous until you picture a section leader opening with the org chart and spending three of them on who reports to whom. We held all 11 leaders to the same format, and I'd keep that rule even if it costs you a leader's favorite slide. Without one format, the room hears eleven different meetings stapled together and nobody hears the fabric.

Some of you won't run it because the QBR deck isn't safe to show the whole team. It has budget lines, a headcount ask, maybe a number leadership hasn't approved yet. That's a fair reason to edit the deck. It's a bad reason to skip the meeting. The story your teams need is what the work added up to, and none of that requires the budget slide.

The sideways question may not happen on its own. In our room, operations asked network about the new design on their own. A quieter room might sit through all eleven stories and ask nothing, especially if the senior leader is standing at the front. If that happens, ask the first cross-team question yourself and then get out of the way.

Somebody will want to cut the closing question because asking a room to raise hands feels like a workshop. Keep it. It costs ten seconds and it's the only measurement the hour gets.

The smaller team has a different problem. If you have twelve people and two leads, you don't need a slot schedule. You need one person who isn't the boss walking everyone else through what the whole group shipped.

Here's the next step, and it's the one I'm planning myself. Once planning is complete, hold the second meeting, the rally around next year's plan, so everyone can see it all before the work starts. Put the date on the calendar this week, while the first meeting is fresh, so it can't become the meeting that hasn't happened in a while.

The first meeting tells them what they built. The second one tells them where it goes.

Keep going. See what a week can do.

No correct answers here. This is practitioner-to-practitioner. The more honest the responses, the more useful this gets for everyone reading on Monday morning.

See you then.

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