I’ve known excellent staff who have resigned over ‘report churn’ within an organisation. That’s the frustrating situation where a report gets written, reviewed by a manager and returned with multiple changes required. When it happens again and again, it can lead to boiling point.
Team leaders and managers are the connection point between decision makers and their staff. When it comes to council report writing, they’re in the hot seat, deciding when a report is good enough to go upwards to the decision makers and when it must be returned to sender. And sometimes it’s easier for managers to rewrite it themselves rather than go through a painful back-and-forth process.
But taking reports home to rewrite cuts into precious time off for the manager. It’s also demoralising for the staff member who remains in the dark about how to make their next report better.
Here are three ways a report can go awry, from the most obvious to the easiest to miss. I’ve also noted where AI can help with report development, and where it can cause problems. These apply whether your reports go to elected members, a board or a senior leadership team.
1. A report that needs to be binned and started again
Telling a team member that their report doesn’t work is an expensive and uncomfortable situation.
Potential causes
External:
Sometimes circumstances change after a report is commissioned, such as a legislative change or a decision maker’s change in priorities. This is outside of everyone’s control, so it’s an easier pill to swallow (but still annoying!).
Internal:
More often a binned report results from a mismatch between the expectations of the manager and the report writer. Here are some examples.
- The purpose and scope for the report wasn’t clearly agreed between you, or it wasn’t communicated in a way that made sense to the report writer. You may not realise this has happened until you read the draft and know it doesn’t deliver the required result.
- Sometimes it’s obvious that a report has been written to support a preferred option, with no evidence of wider thinking about other potential solutions. In these cases, the report only discusses two options: the status quo, and the preferred choice, with the analysis strongly pointing the reader to the second option. The report reads as advocacy for a predetermined decision rather than clear-eyed, objective advice.
Ways to avoid these situations
Get clear on the scope and purpose for the report
Spend some time thinking about these questions before meeting with the report writer to talk about the report.
- Why do we need this report?
- What’s in scope, and what’s out?
- Who is this report for, and what matters to them?
- Is there any important background information that the report writer may be unaware of?
- Who needs to be consulted during the development of the report?
During the meeting, ask the report writer to prepare an outline to discuss with you, rather than waiting to deliver a completed draft. Making big changes to an outline is much less painful than deconstructing a document someone has spent hours perfecting.
Broaden the range of options considered in a report
Encourage your staff to consider a broad range of practical options, and not just the ones that first come to mind, even though they won’t all make it into the final version of the report.
Your team can use AI to come up with a lot of ideas to stretch their thinking beyond the obvious solutions. You may stumble on a great idea you wouldn’t otherwise have thought of. The most likely scenario is it will give you ideas on how to tweak your preferred option to deliver more win-win outcomes.
AI allows you to make big changes at the outline stage. You can explore the advantages, disadvantages and risks of different options without wasting a lot of time on ideas that go nowhere. If you haven’t tried using AI in this way, you may be surprised by how useful it is!
Another option is to discuss the report and ask for options from other team members within a regular team meeting. This allows everyone to practice developing their thinking skills and the report writer gains wider perspectives on their issue. It also sets an expectation for the team that broad option development is part of the work of report writing.
Not all options will make it into the report, and I know short reports are desirable in many organisations. So hard choices will need to be made about what’s included in the main body of the report. Where relevant, the broader assessment could be provided in an appendix. Or it may just be a document to have on hand, making it easier to pivot if elected members aren’t keen on any of the options in the report.
2. A report that needs substantial rewriting
Reports sometimes lack a clear throughline or have clumsy sentence structures that ask too much of the reader.
It may seem easier to fix it yourself than try to explain what needs to be improved. But your substantial rewrites of their work will reduce their motivation to try as hard next time around, because they know you’re going to redo it anyway. (The same thing happened to me as a child, when I mowed the lawn and my parents immediately went back over it!)
Potential causes
- Too much background, data and technical detail stuffed in, distracting from the question to be answered in the report.
- Not writing with the reader in mind.
- Unclear writing style.
What helps
Too much detail
When you review the outline, try summarising the report as an ABT story (a storytelling tool developed by Randy Olson). Here’s the structure: This AND this (the background), BUT this (the issue or opportunity), THEREFORE this (the recommendation).
For a biodiversity report it might run like this. We have five conservation parks AND the bird counts are growing steadily each year BUT pest control costs will double next year, and our budget is not increasing. THEREFORE we recommend investing in promoting and supporting our volunteer pest control programme to maintain the current level of pest control.
Nailing the story (after your staff member has developed a recommendation) will ensure you are both on the same page about the general direction for the report before they go to a lot of effort to write the full report.
Once you have this clear throughline, it’s a lot easier to decide what to include in the report and what to discard. You’ll find more about this ABT story structure in my guide to writing effective council reports.
If a decision maker doesn’t need the information to make the decision, it doesn’t belong in the report.
Not writing with the reader in mind
If the report lacks a focus on the reader’s concerns and interests, try writing a short description of your most important reader and what they care about (e.g. costs, risk management, or environmental or social wellbeing). Then you can ask AI to read the outline from that person’s point of view and suggest the questions and concerns that decision maker might have. You and your staff member can jointly decide if anything in the outline needs rethinking based on this feedback, and any potential gaps to address in the report.
Even if the report writer’s answers to the potential objections or questions don’t make it into the report, doing the thinking will be a good test of the ideas in the report, and will also prepare you and the staff member well for presenting the report to decision makers.
Unclear writing style
Asking staff to read their reports aloud can help them spot the confusing sentences.
Investing in books such as How to Write Clearly by Tom Albrighton can give staff concrete guidance on how to improve their writing style.
You can also upload your draft report alongside some of your organisation’s best reports to AI and ask it to spot areas of the draft report that aren’t as good as the examples.
3. A report that reads well but doesn’t hold up to scrutiny
You may receive a report with a clean writing style, consistent formatting and no spelling errors. The report may look good to go on first glance, until you realise it lacks local details and any original thinking.
This is a growing risk as AI use becomes more commonplace, and it can be hard to pick. It may only become clear that the staff member doesn’t fully own their report when they struggle to answer questions about it, or to explain the thinking behind the recommendations.
What helps
Be clear with your team about where AI use can help, and where it risks undermining their professional credibility. A good way for your team to stay closely involved with their reports is to follow every AI-supported step with at least one manual step. Here are some examples you can share with them:
- Use AI to summarise some background information you selected yourself. Then thoroughly edit the output based on your own understanding of what’s important and relevant to the report.
- Write the first draft of a report yourself, then ask AI to review the overall narrative flow and suggest improvements. Then critically assess the suggestions and only make the changes you agree with. (Don’t fall into the trap of thinking AI knows better than you and blindly follow its suggestions.)
- Upload a list of the key elements of your organisation’s preferred spelling of words that can be correctly spelt two ways, as well as standard punctuation styles (e.g. capitalisation or not of the first word in bullet point lists), and use AI to spot any inconsistencies in the draft report.
Interwoven approaches like these ensure staff will fully own their reports. Always stress to your staff that:
AI can help them write better reports but they need to own the results.
Summing up
When you’re reviewing council reports, most of the churn comes from three risks: unclear purpose and scope, too much detail with too little focus on the reader, and reports that look polished but don’t hold up. Agreeing the scope early, reviewing an outline before a full draft, and making sure your team owns every AI-assisted step will prevent most of it.
Getting help with council report writing
If you’re struggling with reports, I can help. The first thing to decide is whether you have a capacity or a capability issue.
- Capacity: If your team doesn’t have time to take on a report, I can write it for you.
- Capability: If you have staff available to take on the work but want better quality reports arriving on your desk, my report writing training is a better option.
Please get in touch if you’d like to know more. Email: debra.bradley@writingforcouncils.co.nz
