This week’s episode is about the colour that hides the most risk on any programme board. If you’ve watched or listened, you have the argument and the story behind it. I won’t repeat them here.
This issue does two things the episode doesn’t. It takes on the best objection to the argument. And it gives you a way to find the decisions hiding under your own green this week.
The objection
The fair challenge goes like this. If you teach leaders to distrust green, you’ll drown your teams in reporting. Every line gets interrogated, the dashboard grows, and people learn that even good news earns a grilling. That’s how you make red less safe, not more.
It’s a real risk. The usual response to “don’t trust the colour” is more detail on everything. The packs get thicker. The meetings get longer. Nothing gets decided.
So don’t audit the colour. Ask one question of it: “What decision is this green standing on, and who made it?”
On a line that’s genuinely on track, the answer takes ten seconds. The call was made, it has a name, and everyone in the room knows it. That green has earned its colour, and nobody should have to defend it again.
Sometimes the honest answer is “not yet, and here’s when.” That’s fine too. A date and a name is a decision about the decision.
The lines that can’t answer at all are the delivery gap. Not the ones running late. Late is visible. The dangerous ones are the lines where the work is moving, the colour is green, and nobody can point to the call that was supposed to be made.
One question asked of every green line costs less than a hundred reports. And it’s the only one that tells you whether the work is being decided or just described.
The test: An afternoon with your dashboard
Take your programme dashboard. Next to every green line, write three things: the decision it rests on, who made it, and when.
Then sort the lines into three groups.
Earned green. A named decision, an owner, a date. A decision to decide later counts, as long as it has a name and a date. Leave these alone.
Soft green. Something was agreed, but nobody can say who owns it or when it was settled. These are the next to slip.
Borrowed green. No decision at all, just activity that’s going well. This is red that hasn’t been said yet.
Two more checks while you’re there.
Listen to your next review meeting. At the end, write down every decision that was made, with a name next to it. If the list is shorter than the agenda, the meeting was a briefing, not a review.
Then look back over the last three months of the board. When did a line turn red before anyone senior asked about it? If you can’t find one, red isn’t being reported in your organisation. It’s being discovered.
Take your borrowed greens to the next meeting, one at a time, and ask for the decision. Put a name and a date on each before anyone leaves the room.
And once the colours are honest, a harder question is waiting. Even if you trust the colour, could you trust the number underneath it? That’s next week.
The line to remember
Green isn’t the colour of progress. It’s the colour of a deferred decision.
Watch or listen
The full episode is at the top of this post. It opens with a status review where every line was green, and the expensive thing that was hiding under one of them.
You can also listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or watch on YouTube.
If you run the test, reply and tell me how many of your greens turned out to be borrowed.
Built to Absorb. One problem, one fix, every week.
