Mgr Managing Up Brief

---
name: mgr-managing-up-brief
description: Writes a one-page Managing Up Brief to your own manager in SBAR form, with situation, background, assessment and recommendation, two or three options with trade-offs, and the ask with who decides by when. Use for "run mgr-managing-up-brief", "brief my boss", "escalate this to my manager", "managing up", "I need my director to decide", "write an SBAR", "how do I push back on leadership", "caught between leadership and my team", part of the AI for Managers Pack by Polar Bear.
---

# Managing Up Brief

## When To Use
You are caught between leadership and your team. Something is going wrong, or a decision above you is about to land badly, and you need your own manager to act. This answers one question: what exactly am I asking them for, and by when?

## When Not To Use
If the decision is already made and you have to pass it on, run Change Announcement instead; this brief goes up, that one goes down. If the case is about workload and you have no numbers yet, run Team Capacity Planning first and carry its figures here.

## Inputs
- Your notes on the problem, in any order, and the dates that matter.
- Who reads the brief, what they care about, and what they already know.
- Any figures you already have (hours, deadlines, cost), with where they came from.
If you have none of this, I start from a two-line description of the problem and the decision you want, and mark the output as a first draft.

## Approach
SBAR (situation, background, assessment, recommendation) comes from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, where it frames a short, critical handover so the listener can act at once. Upward, it forces the one thing most escalations lack: a clear ask. The failure it prevents is the three-page vent that ends with "thoughts?" and gets a sympathetic reply and no decision.

## Workflow
1. Ask up to three questions: what do you need from them, by what date, and what happens if nothing is decided by then?
2. Situation: write the problem as it stands today in one or two sentences. Test it: if your manager reads only this line, do they know why they are reading?
3. Background: keep only the context this reader needs to decide. Cut history they lived through, and cut anything that reads as blame on a person.
4. Assessment: your read of what is happening and why, labelled as your view. Separate what you know (dated facts, figures with a source) from what you think. Team issues go in as themes, never as a named person's performance.
5. Recommendation: the one action you ask for first, then two or three options with what each costs and risks, including "do nothing". If you are unsure, say what would change your recommendation.
6. The ask: what you need, from whom, by what date. Check the page fits one screen; if it does not, cut background before anything else.
7. Suggest how to send it: ahead of a 1:1, so the meeting is for the decision, not the reading.

## Output Format
```markdown
# Managing Up Brief
**To:** [manager] **From:** [you] **Date:** [date]
**Situation:** [one or two sentences; stands alone]
**Background:** [only what the reader needs]
**Assessment (my view):** [what I think is happening and why]
- Known: [dated fact or figure, with source]
- My read: [interpretation]
## Recommendation
[The action I ask for]
| Option | What it takes | Risk | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
| [option A] | [time, money, people] | [risk] | [what we give up] |
| [do nothing] | [none] | [risk] | [what happens by date] |
## Decision
[Manager name] decides [the ask] by [date]; I will [next step] on [date].
```

## Done When
- The first line tells the reader the problem without the rest.
- The ask names one person, one action and one date.
- Every figure has a source or is marked [to confirm].
- No named team member's performance appears anywhere.

## Quality Bar
- One page. Background is the first thing cut.
- Your view is labelled as your view, never dressed as fact.
- At least two options, one of them "do nothing", each with a real cost.
- No invented numbers; the user supplies or confirms every figure.
- Pay, dismissal or contract points: check with HR or a qualified adviser.
- The brief is about the work; Claude never includes a verdict on a named team member.

## Next
Run mgr-skip-level-meeting (Skip-Level Meeting) to prepare the wider conversation with leadership.

## About the makers

This pack is made by Polar Bear, a consultancy built by ex-McKinsey founders with a dream to make AI work for People, not instead of them. We help our clients build people systems and AI-first ways of working, and we run our own company on Claude. If your team has outgrown the self-serve version, message Pauline (linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry).