{"id":"lead-bad-week-update-plain-voice","audience":"managers","category":"leadership-work","track":"leadership","level":"beginner","technique":"tone","title":"Rewrite a defensive weekly update as an honest, plain one","free":false,"task":"Rewrite this defensive weekly update for your director in plain words. Plain text, under 80 words. Start with the sentence that says the week was behind plan and by how much, then say the cause in one sentence, then the fix with a date. Do not use the words unfortunately, challenges, learnings or bandwidth, and do not blame another team.","materialLabel":"Your draft and facts (attached to your prompt automatically)","material":"DRAFT: \"Unfortunately, we faced some challenges this week due to bandwidth constraints and dependencies on the platform team, but we're confident we'll get back on track. Our learnings will help going forward.\"\n\nFacts\n- Planned: 12 tickets closed. Actual: 7 closed. So 5 behind.\n- Cause: two engineers were pulled onto a production incident Tuesday and Wednesday (about 3 person-days).\n- The platform team's API delay cost us about half a day; minor.\n- Fix: we added one engineer from Thursday (Kofi) and will close the 5 missed tickets by Friday Nov 22.\n- Next week plan stays at 12 tickets.\n- Mood: team is a bit tired but fine.","rules":[{"type":"maxWords","max":80},{"type":"plainText"}],"mistakes":[{"title":"Defensive tone","why":"The AI keeps 'unfortunately' and 'challenges'.","fix":"Say: \"Ban unfortunately, challenges, learnings, bandwidth.\"","checks":["r2"]},{"title":"Hiding the numbers","why":"The AI says 'slightly behind'.","fix":"Say: \"State 7 of 12, 5 behind.\"","checks":["r0"]},{"title":"Blaming another team","why":"The AI points at the platform team's API delay.","fix":"Say: \"Don't blame another team.\"","checks":["r1"]},{"title":"Markdown","why":"The AI uses bullets.","fix":"Say: \"Plain text paragraph.\"","checks":["plainText"]},{"title":"Trusting the AI to count words","why":"AI is bad at counting. Ask for a total word limit and it often lands over it.","fix":"Cap each sentence: \"each sentence under 20 words.\"","checks":["maxWords"]},{"title":"Trusting the AI to count words","why":"AI is bad at counting. Ask for a total word limit and it often lands over it.","fix":"Cap each part instead, for example: \"each line under 12 words.\"","checks":["maxWords"]}],"promptHints":[{"label":"Starts with miss","patterns":["start with","first sentence","behind"]},{"label":"Numbers","patterns":["7 of 12","5 behind","numbers?"]},{"label":"Fix with date","patterns":["fix","friday"]},{"label":"Bans words","patterns":["unfortunately","challenges","ban"]},{"label":"No blame","patterns":["don'?t blame","no blame"]}],"hint":"Give the order of the three sentences, ask for the numbers, and ban the defensive words.","rubricLabels":["The first sentence says the team closed 7 of 12 planned tickets, which is 5 behind","The second sentence names the cause as two engineers pulled onto a production incident on Tuesday and Wednesday, without blaming the platform team","A later sentence gives the fix (Kofi added from Thursday, the 5 missed tickets closed by Friday Nov 22), and none of the banned words appears"]}