Both directions, he is asking "What is going on" and I am telling him. As the org gets larger the request to know what is going on passes down the chain and the reply passes back up.

Usually there’s a central place where status is being updated and shared by everyone (a Slack channel for example) and everyone in the chain can just read/ping/respond there. Less of a chain.

In well designed incident comms systems, the upward comms occurs automatically, not on request.

My goal has always been that my execs know what is going on, so that they are never caught short by status queries.

Thanks, that makes sense. I haven't experienced that myself yet so I wasn't sure.