Nothing slips
quietly anymore.
I'm not the one keeping projects honest anymore.
Something reads them on a clock, whether or not I remembered to look. Ken, named after Ken Norton, sweeps every live project twice a day, measures silence against an SLA in working days, coaches the owner on the real blocker first, and — if it stays stuck — routes the decision to that owner's manager. Notion holds the projects; Slack carries the nudge. No date moves silently.
Notion
The live projects Ken sweeps twice a day.
Slack
Where the coach-first nudge and the escalation land.
Org chart
Who the owner's manager is — so it routes up, not to you.
Proof from the nudge.
A real coaching comment: it affirms the judgment, names the slip as a client dependency rather than the person's failure, and routes the ask up. Cover, not surveillance.
Live nudge · 8 June 2026 · Notion comment · owner & client blurred
Coach first. Route up. Never move the date silently.
I run this on my own projects.
The honest test: I'm not the one keeping projects honest anymore. Something reads them on a clock, twice a day, whether or not I remembered to look. The plan can't quietly come apart, because the gap gets named the moment it opens.
And the coaching is the opposite of looking over someone's shoulder. When a date slips, Ken names the cause out loud — usually a dependency, not the person's failure. It takes the heat off the operator and points it at what's actually stuck. That's cover, not surveillance. It's the part the team actually likes.
Cadence: every live project, twice a day. Trigger: silence past the SLA → coach the owner, then escalate to their manager. Guardrail: it never quietly re-dates a project to make the board look calm.
Questions a team lead asks.
No — it's cover. When something slips, Ken names the real blocker out loud, and it's usually a dependency, not the person's failure. It takes the heat off your operator and points it at what's actually stuck. The team likes it.
It reads every live project twice a day and measures silence against an SLA in working days — two for the most urgent, five, or ten — weekends excluded. When a project crosses the line, it acts.
It coaches first. The opening contact is a question about the real blocker — capacity, clarity, or conviction — before any date talk. And a project it already flagged is held for a week so nobody gets spammed.
The owner's manager, not you. Ken pulls the org chart, finds the right person, and routes the decision there. You're pulled in only for sponsor-level calls.
No. A slip gets named and re-anchored explicitly, with a reason. It never quietly re-dates a project to make the board look calm.
No. It asks the owner first and lets the SLA window elapse — if it didn't ask, it can't call it silence. A dead cycle stays silent; you only hear from it when there's something real.
Nothing. It detects, coaches, and routes to a human decision-maker. People commit dates and make the calls.
Put Ken on the projects you need kept current.
A 30-minute walkthrough on real projects. A project goes quiet, the sweep catches it at the SLA line, the coach-first nudge fires, and the escalation routes to the manager — never to you, never moving the date. You don't manage the plan, and you don't hire for it.