The BRAG Status: Transparency as a Leadership Tool

6 min read

The 30-Second Summary:

The Problem: Teams often feel disconnected from their manager’s priorities, leading to a lack of alignment on the "big picture."
The Solution: The BRAG Status—a lightweight, color-coded Monday morning email to share priorities and surface risks.
The Goal: To build a culture of transparency where reporting is low-effort but high-impact.

Management decisions often happen behind closed doors. If your team doesn't know what you’re working on, they can't see how their work fits into the broader business strategy. Transparency isn't just "nice"—it’s a productivity multiplier.

The BRAG Status is a low-friction + high-velocity, color-coded framework for sharing project health, identifying risks, and celebrating wins without the burden of long-form reporting. Based on guidelines from the team at Manager Tools, BRAG Status brings clarity to project status.

What is a BRAG Status?

The system uses a simple traffic-light model to communicate status at a glance:

B is for Blue: Delivered. The project is delivered and transitioned. (Rarely used, as the focus remains on active priorities).
R is for Red: Blocked. The project is stalled or in immediate danger with no clear path forward. Requires urgent intervention.
A is for Amber: At Risk. Issues are present that may delay delivery. A signal for proactive monitoring.
G is for Green: On Track. Milestones are being met and the path is clear.
The Celebration (🎉 🙌): Wins. Use this to highlight milestones and provide public shout-outs.

We share this status in an email chain that starts on Monday mornings. Anyone on the team can initiate the thread. When I reply, I include my top two or three priorities, the status of that work, and a link to more info. That link is important!

Sample BRAG status

This week in Health AI UX – Week 7

1:1’s – Bring your Challenges + Goals follow-up. You’ve had time to think about your goals and how I can support you in those goals, so let’s discuss them in our 1:1.

Crits – UXR: Xiomara getting feedback on the Project M research plan, UXD: Rafael presenting Project V

Studio – Elevator pitches. Question of the week: Would you rather travel back in time to meet your ancestors or to the future to meet your descendants?

Onboarding New UXers – Green – 🎉🎉🎉
What’s up: We have three new people starting next week!
What worries me: I didn’t check to see if our new friends are allergic to dogs, so I sent them an email this morning and I hope they’ll be okay. (update: they are ok with dogs)
Link: go/howtomanage-onboarding for general onboarding guide

Project K – Amber
What’s up: Meeting tomorrow with antonymendez@, the 20%er who’s done some research on Project K deployments
What worries me: We have an ambitious OKR for the project and I want to move research from a 20% project to full-time support. I’ll highlight this in my 1:1 with our VP of Product tomorrow and during our team session.
Link: go/project-K

Perf prep – Green
What’s up: Working with janevillanueva@, petrasolano@, and rogelio@ to set up Perf clinics for Health UXers. RSVPing to calibration sessions, promo committees, etc.
What worries me: I’m trying not to tell people what to do even though I want us to finalize this administrative cycle (just be chill, self. let other people lead.)
Link: go/howtomanage-perf

The Magic of "What Worries Me"

By explicitly sharing your risks, you normalize vulnerability and proactive problem-solving. It gives your team permission to be honest about their own roadblocks before they become crises.

"What worries me" is a starting point for a 1:1 conversation, team-wide eduction, or building stronger cross-functional connections.

Strategic Best Practices

Provide a Gateway: Always include a link to the actual work (deck, folder, or doc). The status is the hook, but the link is the "source of truth."

Optimize for Intent, Not Activity: BRAG is a list of priorities, not a log of hours. Focus on outcomes.

Scale with Sub-Teams: As your organization grows beyond 12 people, pivot from a single thread to "Squad" BRAGs. This maintains the intimacy and relevance of the update.

Ready to get started?

The BRAG method is easy to implement with a weekly email, works great as a shared spreadsheet if you're a single project team.

BRAG Email Thread

Copy/paste this email template into your Monday-morning email to get your team started with using BRAG status.

Subject: This week in [Team name], MM DD-DD, YYYY

Hi team!

This week I’m kicking off a new way for us to share our priorities. Each week we’ll let each other know the top 2-3 things we’re working on, the status of that work, what worries us (risks or potential issues), plus a link to the work. I’ll get us started this week, with these statuses in mind:

Red: Project is off-track – we are not moving forward (why? do you need help?)
Amber: Project is at risk, but we are working on it (note what you’re doing to fix it)
Green: Project is on track, looking good! (what’s next?)
Blue: We’re ahead of schedule, expectations, etc!
Celebration: Reach a milestone? Want to give a shout-out? Share it: 🎉 🙌

1:1’s – [List any themes or reminders for your 1:1’s this week]

Crit/Studio – [Note prep for team meetings and critique sessions]

[Your name]’s priorities this week

[#1 Priority] – Blue/Green/Amber/Red/🎉 🙌
What’s up: [Describe what you’re doing this week]
What worries me: [Any concerns? Get them out here]
Link: [Be sure to include a link! Model this for your reports]

BRAG AI Toolkit

AI can't do all of your prioritization, but it can help you get past blank-page syndrome by being a formatting partner for surfacing concerns.

Identify the core: Take 60 seconds to jot down your raw thoughts about the project: "I'm worried Project X is slipping because the engineers are burnt out."
Use AI to polish the delivery: Feed your raw notes into an AI to help you frame that worry constructively for the team.
- Sample prompt: "I’ve identified that I'm worried about team burnout on Project X. Help me phrase this for my weekly BRAG status so it sounds supportive and invites a conversation about solutions, rather than sounding like a complaint."
Human audit: Read it back. Does it still sound like you? The goal is to use AI to clean up the "messy first draft" of your thoughts so you can hit 'Send' with confidence.

Tagged: Productivity