Sunday 11th May 2025

This week I am going to share with you the ultimate status report format, and explain why it works so well.

Topics:

• Every week, I write a status report for my manager.
• I write this as my last task on Friday evening, before I close the lid on my laptop.
• As he is based in the US and I am based in the EU, he receives it in the middle of his morning.
• As an SVP, he is very busy: he does not had time to read a lengthy essay, in fact he will refuse to do so.
• Senior managers are time-poor: they are starved of time, therefore will only read the salient points of a report.
• If you make it hard for them to parse out the main points of your report, they will not thank you for it.
• Therefore, you need to be concise with your language and get to the point!
• Verbosity is your enemy: use less words, then remove more words to be sure.
• Ideally you want to be able to summarize your week on a single page, regardless of what happened. Use links to more details on a given topic if required, or include a “Details” section as an addendum.
• To give you a real example you can use, here are the four sections I use in my reports:
  1. Highlights – in this section, you are calling out your wins: product launches, bug fixes, new hires, great customer feedback etc. In a good report, you want your highlights to be the longest list, and each item in that list should be no more than a one-liner in length. Include dates, and any additional metrics to highlight the value of the win.
  2. Lowlights – the opposite to highlights, here you will include your losses. I hate reports that only include good news (I call these “happy happy reports”), because any experienced leaders will see right through these, and know they are BS. The important point here is to highlight any issues to your manager, so they know about any issues from you first, rather than finding out latter on from a 3rd party. You need to keep your manager informed, to ensure they are not blind-sided by not hearing about issues. Again, one line per item on the lowlights list.
  3. Blockers – this should be the shortlist list on your report and ideally should be empty. Include here any topics that you require some help from your manager on, because you are unable to block those topics yourself. Basically, this is your escalation list.
  4. Details – the above three lists should be one liners, but if you need to expand a topic by providing more context of data, you can use the Details section and link back to the relevant Highlight, Lowlight, or Blocker above. Please don’t expand too much however, a few paragraphs should be sufficient.
• If you are strict on yourself about the length of the report, you will force yourself to be concise in your use of language.
• The report should contain status, dates, and metrics, instead of opinion.
• Just present the facts!
• Writing is a skill, and writing a report is a separate skill. You are not writing to entertain your audience, instead you are writing to inform them.
• Maintain a strong bias for factual data.
• Lastly, don’t present raw data and expect a senior leader to parse it: they want to know your findings, not put in the work to determine their own. Again, they are time poor!
• As a senior leader myself, who manages multiple teams and tens of products, I will not read long emails, long presentations, or dive into detailed spreadsheets to find what I need. I simply don’t have time!
• Instead, I will delegate that task to someone else, and ask them to come back to me with summarized findings.
• It’s like the Internet slang TL;DR stands for "too long; didn't read."
• If it is too long, they won’t read it. I know I don’t!
• There is a weird passive-aggressive behaviour you will see in some organizations where someone will add you to the Cc of some massive email chain, then later claim “well I added you to the thread, didn’t you read it?”. My answer is always “no”.
• To be an effective communicator, you need to have empathy for your audience: put yourself in their shoes, and ask yourself if you would read this overly-verbose report if it landed in your inbox?
• If your answer is no, they why would they?
• Keep it concise, and make it easy for them to digest with minimal effort.

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techleaderpro-2025-week-19.mp3

File details: 8.6 MB MP3, 6 mins 6 secs duration.

Title music is "Apparent Solution" by Brendon Moeller, licensed via www.epidemicsound.com

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