Report-writing: how to do it
successfully
Part 1: The road map
What is a report?
No help from the dictionary here
(Oxford English at least) – for the simple reason, I suppose, that the notion
of a written report for business, government, professional and voluntary sector
organisations involves too vast a range of subject material to embrace
adequately in a single definition.
So, for the purposes of this piece, what
I mean by report is a written communication which lays out and explains an
assessment, strategy, financial review or summary, feasibility study, government
or corporation ‘white paper’, proposal of any kind, results of an inquiry,
judgment (in the legal sense, hence the spelling without an ‘e’), research
results – and pretty well any other sort of business.
Having written all of these kinds of
reports, and quite a few others, for multifarious clients, I know as you do that there is a big difference between most
of them. I also know that – thankfully – there are templates of a sort for
putting together, say, an annual report giving the financial and corporate
results of a company, as against a
written report supporting board decision-making about the advantages of buying
one chain of restaurants over another.
So are there principles that all
reports share?
Yes and no.
Yes, in that all reports require a lot
of clear thinking about content and structure; the first to ensure clarity, the
second to ensure ease of reference.
No, in that the content, structure,
style of writing and purpose can differ so wildly between types of report that
they may as well be different animals, or hail from different planets.
I would like to look at the ‘yes’ side
of the above answer and offer some observations on how we should think about
content and structure.
So how do I assemble ideas about
content?
The answer is to marshal your thoughts.
And the way you do this is to start with a question. The question is “What do I
want to achieve?” The more complex the nature of the thing you are writing, the
more levels there will be to the answer.
So, take a piece of paper and write
down all the answers you can think of – and if you are working with colleagues,
so much the better, they will definitely help by adding more answers.
Sometimes the answer is simple – or
there is one dominant answer, for example:
- To provide information to enable decision-making
- To show company results
- To influence the board to go ahead with this project
- To sell more products or services to this or that target
audience
- To explain implications of this or that strategy to the
main board
- To show how to clear a path through these obstacles
- To explain how we can make more profit while reducing costs,
increasing customer numbers and maintaining levels of employment for the next
year.
You notice that the last one just
started to get a little more than simple because there were a number of layers
to it. Never mind, what is important here is that your report effectively hangs
upon one or more propositions about what you want to achieve. It’s your report
and you are clear about the desired outcome – so this is the peg upon which you
hang your content.
Sometimes the answer is more
complicated. Part of the reason for this is that you don’t really know what the
priorities are. You have been asked to do something which is causing you a
headache and even with the help of colleagues you are a little unsettled about
what the real objective of your report is. In this case:
- If you are in a position to get further clarification
from someone who seriously does know, or appears to know the answer, do so
now. Choose three or four of the main reasons why you think the report is
being asked of you and then ask the question: “Can you identify the
biggest priority – or have I not covered the field?”
- If you are not in this position but you have to ‘wing
it’ – a position occupied by many otherwise over-busy people in all kinds
of organisation – set out to write the shortest possible report covering
the most obvious reasons for writing it.
For the time being, at least, stick to
your guns and put your objective or objectives for writing the report clearly at
the top of the piece of A4 paper. Do not – please do not – at this stage think
you have enough to get you started directly on the computer.
This is just a mapping exercise. You
might not look at this bit of paper more than once when you do actually put
your report together, but believe me this bit of scribbling will set the right
direction of travel and save you some frustrating hours tangling yourself in
niceties you don’t need to think about.
Of vital importance, realise that the
thing that you’ve just written down about what you want to achieve by writing
this report is seldom the same as the bit in so many reports that calls itself
‘Objectives of this report’. I’ll unfold this a little. The thing you want to
achieve may be “to influence the board to go ahead with this project” but your
‘Objectives of this report’ will certainly not explicitly state your desire to
influence the board to do anything.
The report’s ‘objectives’ are, let’s
say, to lay out and to explain aspects of the projects costs, feasibility,
implications on company strategy, perceived obstacles and ways of overcoming
them…and other stuff, so that the board can make a decision. If you write an
intelligently constructed report, the Board will not only make the decision you
want but will congratulate itself for doing so – and probably ignore you for
stating the obvious so clearly. Never mind that. You never wrote ‘I want to
impress the board and be recognised for doing this so brilliantly’ as your
foremost objective. On the other hand, one person or two on the main board
might just notice the clarity of the report and how the right pieces seemed to
have assembled themselves with distinction. This may do you some good.
What comes next? Yes, of course, the
content itself.
We are still on the mapping exercise so
scribble down some of the subject areas you wish to cover – all of which
support your objective as written down at the top of the paper. Don’t go into
details about each section yet – see if you can do this with just a few
headings and some doodles. If you are doing this in a group, you’ll quickly
fill the page and make clear what the key areas are.
Now you can assemble your priorities. What
comes first? What’s most important? You’ll realise that some sections of
content are actually subsets of others so you can group those accordingly.
You’ll also notice – depending on the nature of the report – that you have more
detail than you require, for example supporting data and metrics, or other
reports or letters that have informed your thinking or that you wish the
audience to take into account. These will probably be best placed in the
appendices – more on that later.
As you assemble outline content you may
find that the list of content – once tidied up a little – is almost looking
like a structure for the report. But be careful here. You do not necessarily
want to put your most important content first because it might require
supporting arguments which can only be set out by including some of the other
content beforehand. Imagine you are telling a story, a narrative, in a way that
not only holds the audience but which enables them to judge where you are going.
But you are not aiming to thrill your audience, diving and weaving between plot
and character to make them second guess you. You want them close all the time –
your job is clear explanation. So look for a logical sequence. This is normally
a three-stage process depending on each area of content: scene-setting; current
position including options, pitfalls and opportunities; and solutions or
indications of the most appropriate way forward.
As a pointer about content – if you are
using the report to persuade or influence be very careful about assumptions. If
you make them and don’t qualify them, they’ll be spotted quickly and this often
discounts the base of genuine evidence you are building up in the report to
support your argument or to provide an explanation of a circumstance or
situation. If you are looking at something a little nebulous like market trends
and forecasts, do state clearly that these are assumptions and be very careful,
if at all possible, to qualify and explain where and how you obtained these
types of information – and choose credible sources. Do not base your argument
half on assumptions and half on reasonably ascertainable fact – you want as
much of the latter as possible and as little of the former.
A good rule is that assumptions and
forecasts are generally wrong. But don’t follow that rule too closely otherwise
you’ll decide that nothing is ever worth doing because, who knows, we may all
be dead from a cataclysmic event tomorrow or next month. If we are making and
selling energy efficient cars, we have to assume that there are people out
there who want to drive them and will continue to do so. But if we are basing
our reformed business model on the assumption that China will have at least 8 per cent
growth per year for the next fifteen years, or that we will live in an entirely
bookless world within a decade, we are unlikely to achieve our aim of
influencing the board’s decision.
So focus your content on the doable and
the knowable and leave aside the distractions from these arguments. On the
other hand if your report is entirely about possible future trends affecting
local, regional and global markets, you can have a field day…but put your best-shot
assumptions in a line of priority.
As an ancillary point of the same kind,
do not write what you perceive your intended audience already believe or what
you think they want to hear. That will be your perception and you may not have
the wisdom or experience of your audience, or you may not be as stupid as them.
Trying to gauge people’s emotional response to your ideas is not a good way of
creating, prioritising or embellishing the content of a report. Write what you
know.
What about structure?
You have a list of prioritised content
on your paper, and you have subset information. The task
now is to get the ducks in order – you need a series of headings that do
justice to the main sections of content you have decided upon.
So think very carefully about the
content headings you have written down and make sure the headings don’t overlap.
For example, you might have written down ‘sales teams’ and also ‘recruitment
needs’; and you may have written down sales overseas’ and also ‘leading product
lines’. Let’s say you are looking at the current progress of the sales of five
product lines in 12 different countries. Is it best to look at this progress
country by country or product by product? Which way will lead us to the telling
information most quickly and effectively? Which is going to involve the least
amount of duplication? If the trading situation affecting sales in each country
is the main thing of interest then you will probably need 12 sub-headings under
‘sales progress’, one for each country. If it is purely about product line
popularity and demand for each line, it is probably easiest to lead with five
sub-headings representing the product lines.
Once you’ve sorted that out, you might
want to think about whether you place your information on sales teams and
recruitment needs as one section heading and then you might wonder whether you
place this before or after the section on product lines/countries…and so on.
The point is, do the thinking now rather than allowing yourself to be tied into
knots when you commit to writing on screen.
Gradually the scribble becomes a road
map. Make a slightly neater written copy as
a guide taking only two-thirds of the page from the left margin. In the right
margin area make notes about your sources. You may need information from a
letter, a colleague, other reports or another document. Write down what you
need next to the proposed subject headings.
Now you can move to the computer…and you will be ready to
start writing a report that is worthwhile and constructive. Every minute you’ve
put into this preparation time will pay itself back tenfold.
Next time we can look at some simple report formats…
