Preparing Reports for the Entertainment of Management
Leaders are often unaware of the impact and mad scramble their requests for information have on those below them and behind the scenes.
Unless the leader knows how they will use the information or data, they should probably avoid asking others to spend countless hours doing busy work or creating reports pejoratively known in many organizations as “reports for the entertainment of management.”
In too many cases, leaders choose to remain oblivious to the work required in fulfilling a causal, unimportant, or irrelevant desire to have others gather some data, prepare a report, or collect information on their behalf. Those below them often waste weekends and unnecessary hours dotting the i's and crossing the t's to offer a product they can be proud of.
Telling team members not to spend too much time working on the request is the equivalent of telling a prom date not to worry about how they dress. They don’t believe any request from a more senior leader is to be taken lightly. So, they ignore essential work in an attempt to deliver a quality report. It shouldn’t be this way.
Good leaders need to be especially careful what they ask others to do for their benefit. They understand that by requesting a report, new metrics, a presentation deck, or a summary, the busy work that follows can be significant. Any casual or “wouldn’t it be nice to know” requests should be avoided.
Busy work and unnecessary background and data collection are rampant in some organizations, especially those with imperial leaders who use their status and position to make frivolous requests, usually on Friday afternoons.
Every leader should ask themselves how important the data, information, or report is for decision-making and clarity. When peppered with quality answers, if they don’t know how they would use the conclusion then they aren’t ready to make the request.
What information, summaries, and briefs do you ask for? Have you thought about the hamster wheel of wasted time you might have set in motion? When you need a report to make a key decision, ask for it. Otherwise, be more mindful of the impact of your requests that only provide entertainment.
In a past life, I was a data analyst and report writer. I'd get requests from business leaders for a certain report. I would call them up and ask them what questions are they trying to answer with the data or what problems are they trying to identify and/or solve. To my surprise, most business leaders didn't have a good response. Most were mildly perturbed by my question. But I found that over time, my persistence of asking questions help me provide the right reports and data they were looking for (even if they didn't know it at the time).