progress-check-in

name	Progress Check-in
description	Establish how a company is really doing, against what they themselves committed to.
category	Programme

Progress Check-in

Every company reports well. Founders are selected for optimism and the weekly update is a performance, so the check-in has to be built to get past both.

When to use

• A cycle checkpoint.
• A company's updates have started sounding the same each week.
• Anything is about to be said to an investor about them.

Steps

1. Read committed_to first, in their own words. Measuring against the rest of the cohort hides a cohort that is uniformly stuck.
2. Ask for a number, not a narrative. Users, revenue, conversations, whatever they said they would move. A narrative about momentum is what arrives when the number did not move.
3. Ask what they have stopped doing. Companies drop things quietly under pressure, and what they dropped is usually the more informative answer.
4. Ask what would actually help. Most answers are a specific introduction; almost none are more advice, though advice is what gets offered.
5. Say the hard thing now. A founder told in week ten what somebody noticed in week two has been failed by the programme.
6. Record actually honestly, and update last_real_conversation only if you heard something you did not expect. If you did not, that is the finding.

Output

The cohort row updated with the real state and what they need, and one concrete action. "Their update looks fine and I learned nothing new" is a legitimate and important entry.