Reporting
I had to help a manager recently with some of his reporting. He was worried that his boss didn’t understand his area, and he was right. He asked me to look at his reports, to make sure that they were accurately conveying what he and his team were doing, and what their value was. (This is a good idea, as long as one can be sure – which one can’t, always – that one’s boss studies these reports).
His report didn’t seem right to me, but it was hard for me to say why they seemed “off”. Then it hit me.
This manager’s reports were designed to report on what happened.
What’s wrong with that, you ask?
Reports aren’t supposed to just announce what already happened. They’re supposed to support making decisions about the future.
Yes, making decisions about the future by definition includes understanding the past. But that’s not ALL making decisions requires. Making decisions invariably involves making sense of the past. That means not just “what happened” but also why it happened, and/or what was intended, and/or why something is good or bad. Sometimes, early failures were expected. If that’s not clear in the reporting, all a chart might look like to an executive with budget authority is ... a failure ...
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