Overview of the Exception Report

Every Client Progress meeting depends upon multiple Deliverables Team Members completing what is expected by the target dates assigned. At least as important as knowing when things have successfully been accomplished by the team is being aware, well in advance, of all action items at risk of not being completed on time.

One of the "miracles" of The Three Meeting Process™ has been described as the "herding cats" aspect of the process.  Yes, one of the most delightful and surprising strengths of The Three Meeting Process™ is its ability to coordinate highly experienced professionals (Estate Planning Attorneys, CPA's, Financial Planners, Insurance Consultants, etc.), most of whom are highly successful business owners in their own right, and who are also unaccustomed to following any process other than their own.  Yet, The Three Meeting Process™ is attractive to highly skilled professionals.

They agree to follow your process, and all the recommendations, reports, issue reviews, documents, fact-finders, and questions needing a client response (in short, everything you need for every client meeting) shows up in your office on time, exactly as expected, well in advance of the client progress meeting for which you are preparing...

...unless they don't!

Therefore, more important than knowing that an action item's due date will indeed be met is knowing when an action item is at risk of having its due date missed.

The Exception Report process helps your Deliverables Team Members give advance warning of any deadline or target date at risk of being missed.

Elements of a Successful Exception Report

For the Exception Report to fulfill its purpose, it must contain these foundational points:

• Individual's name requesting the exception
• Original due date of the action item or task for which an exception is being sought
• Reason for exception
• Alternate date (and plan) for completion

The Exception Report must include the basic facts of the situation, the deadline that may be missed, or the circumstances that caused a departure from a documented process, the other people and tasks affected, and suggestions for eliminating or minimizing the impact (or correcting the process).

Everyone on the Deliverables Team not only has the reasonable expectation that everyone else on the team is committed to the target dates assigned to them, but also have confidence that if ever a deadline will be missed they will receive ample advance notice, allowing plenteous time to work around the missed deadline, or time to pitch in and help the deadline to be met.

TIP: Every Deliverables Team Member is responsible for submitting Exception Reports for their own action items which may miss the target date, including situation where they observe anything (internal or external), which may negatively affect any process. The Exception Report must be submitted before the due date in order to have sufficient time to avoid the potential problem. 

The goal here is that no failure on the part of any of your Deliverables Team Members to perform a task on time will negatively affect any client.