The “Red Test”

I stole this from a business consultant named Niko Canner. 

How do you score all the various initiatives or projects you are working on. Red, yellow or green? Green means things are going well. Yellow means things are neutral. Red means things have stalled out or at high risk. These can be used in both a business or a personal context. 

In your organization, do you have a culture where it’s acceptable to raise a red status & be willing to discuss this? This is a signal on how open your organization and culture is. 

Why is a project Red? Can you talk about this?  How do you fix this? How do you get this to Green. It’s a good but simple status report. And helps you understand what’s happening and discuss problems when they come up. 

You can also use this for your personal life outside of work. So for example, how would you rate each of the important parts of your life. Parts for example like Family life, Marriage/Love Life, Personal Finance, Health & Fitness. 

I’ve personally started using this framework for my life and it has been quite eye opening. I think it will help you as well.