Profitable Performance Reporting: How to optimize your executive reports for maximum profit

There’s no shortage of management and executive reports—just look at the bookshelf in your office. How many binders are there? How many shelves do they take up? But all these reports are useless until they are read, understood, and acted on in a way that leads to profit.

Leaders in your enterprise need to avoid “typical” reports which say “Here are our results sliced-anddiced every possible way—you figure it out.”

Instead, your executives, board members, and division heads need the following:

• succinct, action-oriented answers to “How are we doing?” and “What can we do better?”
• a top-level roadmap or rolled-up view that provides the full picture
• a report that helps an executive ask pointed questions about particular areas as needed
• a report that gets them from facts to insights—and then to action and profit—as quickly as possible

So how do you build a report that meets these needs?

The best management reports are relevant, complete, compact, and portable. Let’s see how focusing on these four areas can make your reporting more profitable.




Great reports show you all the applicable information without skimping on data that relates to profit and performance drivers. They allow you to see the forest for the trees, but still provide enough detail.
Levels of relevance (low to high):
a. Report sections are created “the way it’s always been done” and without coordination between business units or groups.
b. A few key pages are carefully scrutinized, but most of the report is casually flipped through, ignored, or is used as backup material “just in case” it’s needed.
c. Most of the report is read, but some sections are of particular interest and others are different views of the same thing or are topics that were interesting in the past, but have stayed in the report.
d. The report is read start-to-finish. The contents have been carefully chosen and some less applicable metrics and measures have been intentionally discarded.

Great management reports reflect the breadth of your enterprise and present an opportunity to see trends and results in many areas.

Levels of completeness (low to high):
a. Your report is centered around only one business aspect, such as standard financial statements.
b. Your report is a “greatest hits” collection of reports from throughout the enterprise, formed by tacking together separate reports from multiple departments.
c. Your report is created by reformatting reports from multiple departments into a single lengthy report.
d. Your report is truly balanced with some representation of every business aspect—key reporting items (indicators, metrics) have been carefully chosen from all those available.

Great executive, board-level reports are focused and to-the-point. They prevent you from playing a game of Concentration, where you flip back and forth to find similarities, relationships, and trends.
Levels of compactness (low to high):
a. Your report is presented in 20 or more pages.
b. Your report is presented in six to 19 pages.
c. Your report is presented in five or fewer pages.
d. Your report is presented in a single page, view, or screen. Your report content and details are visible in one eye-span—namely, everything can be seen without flipping any pages and without clicking the computer mouse even once.

Great reports get passed around the table in meetings, get shown in the field, get scribbled on, and get pointed to. Computer screens, web-only reports, and three-ring binders aren’t conducive to those activities.
Levels of portability (low to high):
a. Your report is available only in a three-ring binder.
b. Your report is available in multiple spiral-bound reports. It is available online, but in multiple places and on many different pages.
c. Your report is available in a thin spiral-bound book, less than ¼ inch thick. The same report information is available in a single place (but on multiple pages) on your corporate network or intranet.
d. Your report is available in a printed, single-page format which includes the entire data set, not an abridgement. An electronic version is also available.

How do your existing reports measure up? A one-page dashboard (see left) can optimize your executive reports for maximum performance and results.