Project Failure Files: Pushing Back on Reporting Overload
In Episode 91 of the Project Failure Files weekly webcast, Sharon and I discuss “Drowning in Reports” and the slow creep where project teams spend more time explaining work than doing work. What starts as transparency turns into reporting overload: multiple stakeholders requesting the same status in slightly different formats, at different cadences, for different preferences. The result is a quiet inversion where reporting becomes the project, and the actual project gets whatever time is left.
Sharon and I dig into the real damage: duplicated effort, lost focus, and decision fatigue. When reporting shifts from delivering insight to satisfying formatting preferences, it stops being useful and becomes bureaucracy. Teams lose execution time, leaders lose real visibility, and accountability gets blurry because the energy goes into packaging updates instead of resolving risks and moving work forward.
The fix isn’t “stop reporting”—it’s report smarter: establish a single source of truth, consolidate outputs, and treat new report requests like change control (if it doesn’t drive a decision, it probably doesn’t deserve a weekly ritual). We also highlight practical levers: dashboards people can self-serve, clearer “asks” for leadership, and even chargeback models that make the cost of custom reporting visible—so stakeholders finally feel it in their budget, not just your calendar.
Enjoy the episode!
Be sure to tune in next Monday, May 25th at 9am Pacific for the next PFF episode as we discuss how unbridled optimism can mask serious red flags until it’s too late. Hope you can join us on our NEW YouTube channel (please subscribe!) or find us on LinkedIn.
