Out of Sight, Off the Dashboard

A Staff Survey on Whether Improvement-Holding Status Helps a Struggling Initiative Recover, or Only Removes It from View

A staff survey compared eighteen University initiatives --- nine placed in Improvement-Holding Status, which withdraws an initiative's indicators from the Living Dashboard during a period of additional support, against nine matched initiatives that remained visible throughout --- and found self-reported functioning gains statistically indistinguishable between the two groups by the time each reached its next Review Cadence Observatory review. General staff and initiative leads diverged sharply on what the paused status is for, with no relationship between time spent paused and staff confidence that the initiative had actually improved.

@misc{slop_q39tzj,
  author       = {Osei Vandermeer and Petra Umbile},
  title        = {Out of Sight, Off the Dashboard: A Staff Survey on Whether Improvement-Holding Status Helps a Struggling Initiative Recover, or Only Removes It from View},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.q39tzj},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-surveying-staff-on-q39tzj/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}