Uncovering Expectations
When Your Boss Won’t Set Them
It happens to the best leaders. You sit in meetings, read company-wide emails, and look at the "Vision 2030" slide deck, yet you still don't know what your boss actually wants from your team this quarter. When senior leaders speak in broad strokes, middle managers often feel the weight of the "clarity gap."
You can’t wait for a formal mandate that might never arrive. Instead, you can use Google’s NotebookLM to build your own expectations based on clues from your boss and senior leaders. This closed system AI tool helps you synthesize scattered information into a clear set of expectations.
The first step is to collect the data you already have. Senior leaders often share their priorities through indirect channels. Gather things like:
Strategic Plans: Look for the "big picture" documents that outline company goals for the next three years.
Town Hall Transcripts: If your company records all-hands meetings, grab the transcripts.
Executive Emails: Find those "State of the Company" updates that usually sit unread in your inbox.
Annual Reports: These documents tell investors what the company values.
Directions from Your Boss: Anything that your boss has sent that hints at expectations or future initiatives.
Your Job Description: You will eventually search the data for clues as to what it all means for your department so you have to give the AI some background. Load your job description. Put in any documents you have given your team about your expectations. Include any industry-specific articles about what others in your role do.
Budgets: Load in your organization’s budget, your department budget, and any other financial reports you receive.
Upload these files into a new notebook in NotebookLM. This creates a closed environment in which the AI only considers your company's data.
Ask the Right Questions
Once your documents are in place, you need to probe the data. Don't ask the AI to "predict the future." Instead, ask it to find the links between high-level goals and your specific department.
Try these prompts to get started:
"Based on the strategic plan and the CEO’s last three emails, what are the top three priorities for my department?"
"Identify any mentions of budget constraints or resource allocation that will affect my team this year."
"What metrics does the board of directors use to define success in the current fiscal year?"
The tool will pull specific quotes and citations from your sources. You aren't guessing anymore. You’re citing the organization’s own words.
When a boss fails to give clear instructions, they often assume you already know what to do based on the "company direction."
Ask NotebookLM to summarize the "unspoken" requirements for your role based on the initiatives you uploaded. It might be found that, while your boss hasn't asked for a digital transformation plan, the company’s focus on "efficiency through AI" makes it an implicit requirement for your department.
Prompts to Turn Strategy into Performance
You have the sources. Now you need the metrics. Most plans use broad terms like "growth" or "excellence." These words don't help your team on a Tuesday morning. You need Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Use these prompts in NotebookLM to get the numbers you need.
Identify the Core Mission
Start with the "what." You need to know the organization's primary purpose, goals, and targets.
Prompt: "Read the CEO's annual letter, the board's report, and our monthly financial reports. What's the main goal for the next twelve months? List the ways my department can help reach that goal."
Find the Hard Data
Strategy documents often hide numbers in the fine print. You want to extract those specific targets.
Prompt: "Look for percentages or dollar figures in the initiatives. Which of these targets depend on my team's work? Create a table that shows the target and the source document."
Create Your Own Targets
Sometimes the documents remain vague. You can ask the AI to bridge the gap for you.
Prompt: "The company wants to improve customer retention by ten percent. My team handles back-end data. Suggest three KPIs for my team that support this retention goal."
Use the "Stress Test"
Before you show these to your boss, make sure they make sense.
Prompt: "Find any contradictions between the CFO’s budget memo, the financials, and the Marketing team's growth plan. How do these conflicts change the expectations for my department?"
This gives you a clear set of data points. You can walk into your next meeting with a plan that matches the company's direction. It's hard for a supervisor to ignore a plan that uses their own words.
Outline Your plan
Here’s a template you can use to create a plan for your department using the expectations that have been identified by NotebookLM:
Departmental Alignment Plan: [Quarter/Year]
The Primary Goal
(Insert the main organizational goal you found in the CEO’s letter or the board report here. Keep it to one sentence.)
Our Department’s Mandate
(List three core responsibilities your department holds based on the strategic plan. Use the AI to help define these.)
Priority 1: [Task or focus area]
Priority 2: [Task or focus area]
Priority 3: [Task or focus area]
Success Metrics (KPIs)
(List the numbers or percentages you extracted. Mention the source document for each metric.)
Metric A: [Target] (Source: [Document Name])
Metric B: [Target] (Source: [Document Name])
Metric C: [Target] (Source: [Document Name])
Strategic Support
(Explain how these metrics help the company reach the goal listed above. Use the AI's summary of "unspoken" expectations here.)
Gaps and Questions
(List the conflicts or gaps you found. Use these to get a firm answer from your boss.)
The budget memo mentions a freeze, but the growth plan suggests a new hire. Which direction should I follow?
The town hall notes mention a pivot to a new market. Does our team shift our current project to match this?
Turn Insights into Action
Now that you have a list of expectations, take them to your supervisor. Don't wait for them to initiate the talk.
You can say: "I’ve analyzed our current strategic initiatives and the recent town hall notes. It looks like our department needs to focus on X, Y, and Z to support the company’s move toward the new market. Does this align with your vision?"
This approach does two things. It shows you're a proactive leader who understands the business, and it forces a "yes" or "no" from a boss who has been vague. You’ve turned a pile of PDFs into a roadmap for your team.
BTW - If you are the boss who isn’t setting expectations for your team, you can use the same approach. Load your job description, your team’s job descriptions, organizational and personal goals, budgets, reports, emails, to-do list, industry articles, and anything that hints at something your team should do, then ask NotebookLM to suggest expectations you should have of your team related to your departmental, organizational, or company goals.
