It has been sitting with the partner since Tuesday
The team finishes a draft recommendations report on Tuesday afternoon and sends it to the engagement partner for review. The partner is on another client's site, has three other deliverables in their inbox and a proposal due. They open it on Thursday night, spend part of their review fixing inconsistent numbers and formatting, and send back comments on Friday morning. The client deadline is Friday afternoon.
Partner review is essential. It is also the bottleneck on most deliverables, and a lot of partner time goes on things that did not need a partner.
Why partner review stalls
- Deliverables arrive by email with no summary of what to focus on.
- Partners cannot see which of several reviews is most urgent.
- Mechanical issues, inconsistent figures, typos, template errors, reach the partner.
- Second reviews start from scratch because changes are not highlighted.
- Teams do not know when to expect comments, so they wait.
Partners rarely say no to a review, so the queue grows invisibly. Each team assumes its deliverable is the priority, and the partner, travelling between clients, works through whatever is at the top of the inbox rather than whatever is most urgent.
What that costs
| Issue | Effect |
|---|---|
| Deliverables wait for review | Last-minute rushes before client deadlines |
| Partner time on proofreading | Less time on client relationships and sales |
| Late comments | Team works evenings to address them |
| Inconsistent review depth | Quality varies across engagements |
Clients feel it as well. A deliverable that arrives at the last minute, with changes made overnight, leaves no time for the sponsor to preview it before a meeting. Sponsors who are surprised in front of their own executives remember it.
How we build a review queue
- Teams submit deliverables for review through a simple form: the document, the deadline, the client's key concerns, and specific questions for the partner.
- Automated pre-checks look for inconsistent figures across the document, template and formatting issues, spelling, and leftover comments or client names from other work.
- Pre-check findings go back to the team to fix before the partner sees the document.
- For second reviews, a summary of changes since the last version is produced.
- Partners see a queue across all their engagements, sorted by deadline, with the brief for each.
- Comments are recorded against the deliverable and tracked to resolution.
- Teams see when their deliverable is expected to be reviewed.
The pre-checks deal with mechanical issues only. Whether the argument holds, the recommendations are right and the client will accept them is the partner's judgement.
We usually agree the pre-checks and the brief format with two or three partners first, since their habits decide whether the queue gets used. The brief takes a few minutes for the team to write and saves the partner far more than that.
How reviews run afterwards
Partners open a deliverable knowing what to focus on and what changed. Mechanical issues are already fixed. Reviews are faster and deeper at the same time.
Teams know when comments will arrive and plan around them, rather than waiting.
Is this your review process?
- Deliverables wait days for partner review.
- Partners fix formatting and numbers.
- Second reviews start from scratch.
- Teams work evenings after late comments.
- Partners cannot see all their pending reviews in one place.