Status emails are not a "Potemkin supervisory framework". They're a scalable way of communicating progress broadly in a way that can be referenced later, rather than an ephemeral way to communicate to one person.
That's kind of the point I was trying to make when I said that sending weekly stats is valid. I'm not saying that status emails are implicitly bad, I'm saying that they're poorly implemented.
The problem is that status emails containing substantive subjective summaries of the challenges faced by the person writing them are often used by incompetent managers as a replacement for constructive dialogue between them and their direct reports. At least, this was the case at the two companies I worked at that had a required status email as part of the weekly drumbeat. And I've heard a fair amount of anecdotal evidence from friends at other places that the problem is widespread.
Not really, I think the article is basically a how-to guide for good status emails and what I am saying is that even if they're well implemented they can be an impediment to effective management and intra-company communication.
