Writing Strong Business Reports: Don't Forget the Detail

It takes a lot of work to put detail into your projects. You have piles of other things that you need to accomplish but these projects are sitting in your way. Therefore like most busy people you want to go ahead and get them done as quickly as you can. Moving too fast on your projects might embarrass you in the long run.

The problem is that when you go fast you also make mistakes. These mistakes come in the form of serious misperceptions, incorrect data or poor presentation. Without getting the details right you might be setting yourself up for failure. Your report or finished project should be well thought out and easy to understand.

"Garbage In and Garbage Out" is an appropriate term to use. If the information you are putting into your report is poor, it doesn't matter how complex or wonderful the assumptions. They are likely to be wrong. Extra time must be taken in the beginning of the project in order to ensure integrity.

Take your time in the beginning of the project collecting the data so that assumptions will have a better chance of being correct. If you are rushing through the project there is an increased chance that you will miss important pieces of data that can have a serious impact on your overall findings. If the data isn't correct your assumptions will be wrong.

If you feel overwhelmed with the report you can either break it into milestones or have someone else help you. It is better to give out pieces of the report than to turn in a poor report to your boss. By breaking it down you can focus on one section alone and this helps maintain the reports integrity. You have the chance to think through each section completely before moving on.

If you are under a pressing time frame you can always have other people help you. However, you must make sure they will take the data collection section of the report seriously. If they slap it together because they aren't going to get credit for it anyways then you will be left holding a report that can damage your credibility. You are in charge of the project so saying "I didn't know they made a mistake" is not going to be acceptable.

Once you have gathered all of the data, made the assumptions then you must build the report for presentation purposes. Most of the paperwork is reference by nature so make sure they are appropriately labeled and easy to find (indexes are nice). The summary and the first few pages should solely be focused on giving your boss or client an easy to read summary of the results. Placing a diskette with an electronic version may also be of great help for graphs, chars, and summaries they may want to send to other people.