By adopting the three-step writing process you can reduce the time required to write effective reports and still produce documents that make lasting and positive impressions on your audiences.

Given the length and complexity of many reports, it’s crucial to define your purpose clearly so as not to waste time with avoidable rework.

Pay special attention to the statement of purpose and take the time to prepare a work plan before starting writing.

Informational reports often address a predetermined need and must meet specific audience expectations. Sometimes, however, you will need to determine audience needs before defining the optimum purpose.

Analytical reports and proposals are almost always written in response to a perceived problem or a perceived opportunity.

Address the problem or opportunity with a clear statement of purpose that defines why you are preparing the report.

• The statement of purpose for an analytical report often needs to be more comprehensive than a statement for an informational report.
• Proposals must also be guided by a clear and specific statement of purpose to help focus on crafting a persuasive message.

 

Carefully thinking through a work plan is the best way to make sure you produce quality work on schedule. By identifying all the tasks that must be performed, you ensure that nothing is overlooked.

A formal work plan might include the following elements (especially the first two):

• Statement of the problem or opportunity. The problem statement clarifies the challenge you face, helps you stay focused on the core issues, and avoid distractions.
• Statement of the purpose and scope of your investigation. The purpose statement describes what you plan to accomplish and defines the boundaries of your work. Delineating which subjects you will cover and which you won’t is especially important for complex investigations.
• Discussion of tasks to be accomplished. For simple reports, the list of tasks to be accomplished will be short and probably obvious. However, longer reports and complex investigations require an exhaustive list so that you can reserve an appropriate amount of time for preparation.
• Description of any additional products or activities that will result from your investigation.
• In many cases, the only outcome of your efforts will be the report itself. In other cases, you’ll need to produce something or perform some task in addition to completing the report. Make such expectations clear at the outset.
• Review of project assignments, schedules, and resource requirements. Indicate who will be responsible for what, when tasks will be completed, and how much the investigation will cost. Identify these limitations upfront.
• Plans for following up after delivering the report. Follow-up can be as simple as making sure people receive the information they need or as complex as conducting additional research to evaluate the results of proposals included in your report.
• Working outline. Some work plans include a tentative outline of the report.

The amount of information needed in many reports and proposals requires careful planning—and may even require a separate research project just to get the data and information you need.

Prioritize informational needs before starting and focus on the most important questions.

Whenever possible, try to reuse or adapt existing information to save time.

In addition to the general media selection criteria already discussed, consider several points for reports and proposals:

• For many reports and proposals, audiences have specific media requirements that must be met.
• Consider how audience members want to provide feedback on your report or proposal.
• Will people need to search through your document electronically or update it in the future?
• Bear in mind that your choice of medium sends a message.

The length and complexity of most reports and proposals require extra emphasis on clear, reader-oriented organization.

When an audience is likely to be receptive, use the direct approach. Lead with a summary that consists of these elements:

Key findings

Conclusions

Recommendations

Proposal

If your audience is sceptical or hostile, consider the indirect approach.

Introduce your complete findings and discuss all supporting details before presenting conclusions and recommendations.

By deferring the conclusions and recommendations to the end of the report, you imply that you’ve weighed the evidence objectively.

Because both direct and indirect approaches have merit, businesspeople often combine them. They reveal their conclusions and recommendations as they go along rather than put them either first or last.

Informational reports provide the information that employees, managers, and others need in order to make decisions and take action. These can be grouped into four general categories:

Reports to monitor and control operations. Business managers rely on a wide range of reports to see how well the various systems in their companies are functioning.

Plans establish expectations and guidelines to direct future efforts.

Operating reports provide feedback on a wide variety of an organization’s operations.

Personal activity reports provide information regarding an individual’s progress.

Reports to implement policies and procedures.

Policy reports range from brief descriptions of business procedures to lengthy manuals.

Position papers, sometimes called white papers or backgrounders, outline an organization’s official position on issues that affect the company’s success.

Reports to demonstrate compliance. Even the smallest businesses are required to show that they are in compliance with government regulations of one sort or another. Compliance reports are usually created in specific formats that must be followed exactly.

Reports to document progress. Progress reports range from simple updates to comprehensive reports.

Most informational reports use a topical organization, arranging the material by topic in one of the following ways:

Comparison. Showing similarities and differences (or advantages and disadvantages) between two or more entities

Importance. Building up from the least important item to the most important (or from most important to the least, if the audience will only skim the report)

Sequence. Organising the steps or stages in a process or procedure

Chronology. Organising a chain of events in order from oldest to newest or vice versa

Geography. Organising by region, city, state, country, or other geographic units

Category. Grouping by topical category, using a pattern consistently

 

The purpose of analytical reports is to analyze, to understand, to explain—to think through a problem or an opportunity and figure out how it affects the company and how the company should respond.

 

Be careful not to confuse a simple topic with a problem. To help define the problems that analytical reports address, answer these questions:

What needs to be determined?

Why is this issue important?

Who is involved in the situation?

Where is the trouble located?

How did the situation originate?

When did it start?

Not all these questions apply in every situation, but asking them helps define the problem being addressed and limits the scope of the discussion.

Another effective way to tackle a complex problem is to divide it into a series of logical, connected questions, a process sometimes called problem factoring. Use the available evidence to organize an investigation or to start a search for cause-and-effect relationships.

When you speculate on the cause of a problem, you’re forming a hypothesis, a potential explanation that needs to be tested.

When expecting the audience to agree with you, use the direct approach to focus attention on conclusions and recommendations.

When you expect your audience to disagree or to be hostile, use the indirect approach to focus attention on the rationale behind your conclusions and recommendations.

 

When writing for audiences that are likely to accept your conclusions, use a direct approach that focuses immediately on those conclusions.

This structure communicates the main idea quickly, but it presents some risks.

Starting with a conclusion may create the impression that you have oversimplified the situation.

Generally, take this direct approach only when your credibility is high.

When structuring a report around recommendations, use the direct approach. Then unfold your recommendations using a series of five steps:

Establish or verify the need for action in the introduction by briefly describing the problem or opportunity.

Introduce the benefit that can be achieved, without providing any details.

List the steps (recommendations) required to achieve the benefit

Explain each step more fully, giving details on procedures, costs, and benefits.

Summarize your recommendations. Make sure readers know the potential disadvantages as well as the potential benefits.

If you guide people along a logical path toward the answer, they are more likely to accept it when they encounter it.

The two most common logical approaches are:

The 2 + 2 = 4 Approach. The 2 + 2 = 4 approach is so named because it convinces readers of your point of view by demonstrating that everything adds up. The main points in your outline are the main reasons behind your conclusions and recommendations.

The Yardstick Approach. The yardstick approach is useful when you need to use a number of criteria to evaluate one or more possible solutions. These criteria become the “yardstick” by which you measure the various alternatives.

First, your audience members need to agree with the criteria you’re using in your analysis. If they don’t, they won’t agree with the results of the evaluation.

Second, the yardstick approach can get tedious when you have many options to consider or many criteria to compare them against.