Watermelon Reporting

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Cultivated’s ongoing work on clarity, truth, and decision-making inside organisations — exploring why so much effort fails to translate into value, and how distance from reality quietly erodes trust and outcomes.

Watermelon Reporting
When Everything Looks Green
Until You Cut It Open

Every company has it.

A project looks green on the outside — but cut it open and it’s red all the way through.

Status says “all okay.”
Reality tells a different story.

PowerPoint is calm.
The team is barely holding it together.

This is watermelon reporting — and it’s everywhere.

It usually shows up through RAG status reporting: Red, Amber, Green.
A well-intended shortcut designed to summarise project health quickly.

But shortcuts come with a cost.

RAG status is subjective.
Easily gamed.
Often aspirational rather than truthful.

Green doesn’t mean healthy.
It means “no one wants to say otherwise.”

Why It Happens

Watermelon reporting doesn’t thrive because people are dishonest.

It thrives because honesty feels unsafe.

In blame-heavy cultures, red is treated as failure rather than information.
So teams soften the truth.

They mark Amber hoping they can recover before anyone notices.
They delay the bad news.
They protect themselves.

Not out of malice — but self-preservation.

Only a small number of organisations treat Red as a request for help rather than a punishment.

W. Edwards Deming put it simply:

“Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.”

Most status reporting is exactly that — opinion.

Optimism disguised as confidence.
Hope standing in for evidence.

Leaders are told what they want to hear, not what they need to know.

Seeing Reality More Clearly

The antidote to watermelon reporting isn’t better colouring-in.

It’s proximity to reality.

Truth needs to arrive early — not once it’s unavoidable.
Delay only compounds cost, effort, and disappointment.

Data matters.
Evidence matters.
Connecting investment, activity, and outcomes matters.

But dashboards alone won’t save you if the climate at work punishes honesty.

No reporting system can compensate for fear.

If you rely on status:

• Ask what evidence sits behind it.
• Tie colours to observable outcomes, not sentiment.
• Get closer to the work.
• Visit teams. See progress. Ask questions.

And most importantly:
Create conditions where Red means support, not shame.

Why This Matters

Decisions are only as good as the reality they’re based on.

Watermelon reporting delays action.
Burns trust.
Wastes money and energy.

Truth, even when uncomfortable, gives leaders something solid to work with.

As the Stoics would remind us:
the truth itself never hurt anyone — avoiding it always does.

Clarity begins where pretending ends.