Report-Writing How To Do It Successfully

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.