Truth 22
Focused Status Reports Get Read; Random Ones Don't

In all my years in business, I have yet to meet anyone who actually enjoys writing status reports. Status reports are often viewed as a largely administrative activity to show people that you are getting stuff done, to communicate potential problems, and (for some) to cover your butt if problems occur. I admit that I too fall into the camp of those who don't enjoy writing status reports. But I've resigned myself to one thing: Life isn't always about what you enjoy doing. Status reports need to be done, so suck it up and do them.

Status reports don't have to be long, verbose documents that provide an audit trail for the work that was completed in the affected period. A status report, at its core, focuses on the following components:^[5]

• The status of financial or key organizational indicators
• The status of key milestones for planned work or projects
• The status of major risks with mitigation strategies being deployed
• The status of major issues with the desired resolution

Financial and key organizational indicators outline the major measures an organization uses to measure its effectiveness. Examples of key measures could include items such as time to fulfill an order, average cost per transaction, number of items shipped per day, or revenue per headcount. Typically, key measures are tracked against some target that management establishes. For example, if a business wants to achieve 250 orders processed per day, the target would be 250 orders per day, and the actual would be reported against the target to measure how close the organization is to meeting its goal (or how far it is from the goal).

The status of key milestones outlines major projects or tasks an organization is working on by comparing planned completion dates to actual completion dates. An organization may also want any revisions to a planned date, which is known as a revised completion date. For example, if an organization is undergoing a project to revise its customer service policies with a planned completion date of May 16, and then it revises the completion date to May 31 and actually completes the project on June 2, all three dates would be included on the status report to show when the task was originally scheduled to finish, its revised completion date, and its actual completion date.

The status of major risks outlines the risks an organization faces and what actions can be taken to mitigate the risk. A great example of this was what many organizations experienced with Y2K. The risk was that there would be some kind of business stoppage because computer systems would recognize the year 2000 as year 00 because of older coding techniques. The mitigation strategy for most companies was to comb through their systems and, for every instance of a two-digit year, to change it to four digits. The result of the mitigation strategy was very clear. Y2K was largely a nonevent because of the successful mitigation strategy deployed worldwide (not that Y2K was just a bunch of hype, as many people think).

The status of major issues outlines key business issues that an organization is currently experiencing and the issue's resolution by the appropriate decision maker. For example, suppose a business experiences a sudden upturn in orders, which prevents it from responding to customer service requests in a timely manner. The business owner may have to decide between hiring additional people to handle the increased order volume, authorizing overtime for existing personnel, and accepting a temporary increase in outstanding customer service requests while the business works through the increased order volume. The decision chosen from the alternatives is the resolution that then closes the issue.

If writing status reports is a requirement of your job, suck it up and do it. Focus your status reports on key, relevant, results-driven organizational indicators, milestones, risks, and issues. Don't fall into the trap of throwing everything plus the kitchen sink into your status reports. You'll just turn off your audience.

Focus your status reports on key indicators, milestones, risks, and issues. Don't throw in everything plus the kitchen sink.