Schrödinger's Status
Every project has a status. It's also probably wrong. Not because anyone is lying — but because complexity doesn't compress cleanly into a color.
A simple "Can you update me on Project X?" unleashes a Pandora's Box of hurried conversations.
The lead or the PM will send an email, Slack, or set a meeting and collect a variety of data:
Engineering is waiting on approved architecture and not confident about the complexity of the integration.
Marketing says the copy and assets are right on track.
The Sales team is pumped because the customer is feeling great and excited.
The Forward Deployed team is feeling a little burnt out and worried about blockers on the customer's side.
That Project Lead reviews everything and says
"Well... I'd say we're Green."
That web of complexity gets reduced to a color. The project hasn't changed. Nobody's role changed, the date of eventual completion isn't moved, and there are still dozens of opinions on the actual state of the project.
Meanwhile, the project never really had a single "status" to begin with. It had hundreds of interrelated conditions that different people understood from different vantage points.
"Green" isn't the project's reality. It's our compression of it.
If it's green, it suddenly becomes a darling of leadership... bringing more eyes, and with it, more risk of no longer meeting that label... even if it's trending yellow. And we're less likely to call it yellow under those circumstances.
It's a valuable idea, but it's still only an idea. And it's an idea that pops up everywhere.
Like how teams in organizations jockey over position to own a new function. "That's Martech," or "That's IT" or "That's Marketing." When that new function finally gets labeled, it loses connection to those other teams, even if they are core to its function. Suddenly, that new MarTech resource is angling for time with IT to get the deploy the need out, or with Marketing to ensure they get their copy on time.
Bear with me for a moment, but I've been reading about quantum mechanics lately. Not because I think organizations are the same as quantum physics, but because one idea kept sticking with me. Reality, as it turns out, is really weird. Weirder even than we imagined when vast swaths of the map simply said "Here There Be Dragons."
Light isn't simply a wave or a particle. The answer depends on the question you're asking and what you're observing. Your project isn't "red" or "green," it's both depending on who you ask and when you happen to ask them... and who asked the question. "MarTech" isn't Marketing or Technology, it's either and both depending on what you're working on.
We don't boil complexity down to a simple color or team label because it makes life easier on us... We need classifications. They help us organize and coordinate. Nobody can actually manage the dozens or hundreds of micro-statuses in their head, so we have to boil that down to something we hope is useful. But maybe we get too attached to them. The abstractions help us work together, but they might also make it harder for us when it matters.
Just don't lose sight of that complexity and be mindful of when it's time to crack open the box and see what's really happening under the lid and find out what's really happening with that cat.
Ryan Yepsen
Ryan writes about enterprise AI, customer reality, systems thinking, and the operating conditions that make meaningful execution either possible or painful.