I don’t have time to write reports.

My boss does not read my reports anyway.

I have nothing to report.

Does this sound familiar to you?

Report writing should not be a chore but an activity that you can enjoy (because you achieve the result you want through the report). Here are some guidelines:

1. Know who are the report recipients. Be it a project or weekly report, you must have an audience to write to. Knowing who are your audience helps you to create a high impact report. You want your reports to be read and achieve certain reactions don’t you?
2. Establish objective of  your report. What is the message that you want your reader to receive? For example, in a project report, you want your readers to be aware of the project’s health (is it on schedule, any new risks identified or issues that requires attention).  In a weekly report, you want  your boss to be aware of your contributions, achievements as well as problems that requires his/her support.
3. Develop templates that you can easily insert contents. Report writing should not take more than 30minutes. For that matter, no one says that you should write  your weekly report only on the last day. You can spread out your report writing over the entire span of the week.
4. Identify the areas in which you want the report to help you achieve your goals. A good and consistent report can help you drive the project and getting all the individual activities owner on their feet because the report is being read by all the important stakeholders.
5. Be creative and sharp. Use pictures, charts, tables, etc, to deliver crispy clear message to your ready. For example, instead of writing how well  you have done to maintain high up time for your system and services, it would make more impact if you draw a few charts showing the trends.
6. Keep it short and simple. Don’t write a 50 pages report. If you do not want to read a long report, what makes you think anyone else would? If someone wants to know more, they will approach you for elaboration.
7. Be punctual and consistent. If you deliver your report every Tuesday at 4pm, then do so consistently. This will help to reinforce the authority of your report and generate anticipation from your audience.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 8:55 am and is filed under Organization Behaviour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.