Rob Barrett

Stay with the work.

A decision only matters when the team can act on it. Lead the change alongside the people doing the work, review what is actually improving and leave the capability with them.

Prototype approach detail. The activities below are proposed ways of working, shaped to an engagement rather than a fixed programme or promised outcome.

Discuss what needs to change

Turn the choice into work someone owns.

The execution stage follows making the choices visible. It starts with an agreed problem, a direction and someone accountable for moving it forward.

Bring the decision into the team’s existing planning and delivery rhythm. Define the next useful change, the person who owns it and the dependencies that could stop it. Make space for the work by naming what will pause or wait.

Leadership means helping resolve the difficult parts: competing commitments, unclear authority and decisions that cross team boundaries. A plan should make those conversations easier, rather than hide them behind a delivery date.

For a platform change, the next step might be a bounded migration with a recovery plan. For an operating-model change, it might be a clearer owner for one service. Choose a step that tests the direction without committing the whole organisation at once.

Review the evidence.
Change the plan.

Progress reviews should help people make a decision. More activity, a fuller backlog or a reassuring status colour does not establish that the original problem is getting smaller.

Agree a small set of useful signals before changing the work. Review them alongside the team’s experience and the commercial context. Look for consequences as well as improvements: faster releases are less useful if failures or support demands rise.

Use the questions below as a possible review agenda. Each ends in an action, an explicit decision to continue or a reason to reconsider.

What changed for the business or the team?

Compare the starting point with current evidence. Depending on the problem, that might mean the time work spends waiting, release reliability, service cost or the effort required to support a new practice.

Record what the evidence does and does not tell us. A short run of better results is a reason to investigate, not proof that the change caused them.

Where is work still getting stuck?

Follow a real piece of work through its hand-offs. Separate a temporary obstacle from a recurring constraint such as an overloaded decision-maker, conflicting priorities or a dependency nobody owns.

Give the next intervention an owner. Escalate decisions that need authority outside the team, with clear options and consequences.

Should we continue, adapt or stop?

Check whether the original assumptions still hold. A changed commercial priority, an unexpected operational cost or a safety concern can justify a different route.

Write down the decision, the reason and what will be reviewed next. Stopping an unhelpful change can be a useful result of the review.

Build the handover into the work.

Capability transfers through participation. The team needs to be able to explain the decisions, operate the change and decide what happens next.

Work with the people who will retain responsibility. Involve them in trade-offs, let them lead reviews and test whether the supporting documentation answers the questions they actually encounter.

  • Named ownership: who makes decisions, who operates the service or practice and where unresolved issues go.
  • Usable context: a short record of the choices made, alternatives rejected and assumptions still to test.
  • Operational confidence: guidance for routine work, exceptions and recovery, tried by the people who will use it.
  • An independent next step: a team-led review of progress and remaining risks, with an agreed route for any further support.

These are possible handover checks, not a prescribed pack of deliverables. The test is whether the team can carry the work forward without every decision returning to an adviser.

Stay close.
Keep responsibility clear.

Agree which decisions Rob owns, which remain with existing leaders and when an issue needs executive input. Fractional leadership needs an explicit scope and a workable route for decisions between planned conversations.

If priorities, capacity or risk change materially, revisit the commitment. Honest review includes making a narrower scope visible when the original plan is no longer credible.

A useful starting question: which change is agreed in principle but still struggling to become part of everyday work?

Start with that change