One career skill that is prominently important is report writing. Many business jobs require the task of writing a report, plus having the skill can profoundly increase how well you are perceived and the extent to which you make progress in your chosen career. Regardless of your specialty or career, good communication skills and the ability to write effective reports are essential competencies you need to develop.
Report writing is an art that needs to be mastered. When you master the art of report writing, you find it easy to write reports that will be read without unnecessary delay, and they can be understood without so much effort. This will, in turn, lead your readers to the right kind of action you wish them to take. This requires you to be skilful enough to communicate in a way that is both acceptable and intelligible to your readers.
The first part of this series on report writing will focus on the systematic approach you need to adopt to help you produce an effective report – this, notwithstanding your specialty – engineering, manufacturing, business administration, public relations, health, education, etc. We will then move on to examine how you can get creative when writing your report. While it is important to know all of what you want to say, it is equally important to know how to say it in a way that will arouse and capture the interest of your reader. Perhaps we would point out a few aspects of technological embellishments that could be added to make your reports stand out. Yet another series might take us through the different kinds of reports and how to write them specifically. So, grab your popcorn and drink and read with me!
Let’s begin by reflecting on the practical things you need to do to if you want to begin your report writing. One of such things is preparation. Many writers dismiss the idea of taking out the time required for preparation. They believe that because they have been writing for a while, they do not need to spend some time preparing. But this doesn’t lead to the best of results for anyone who takes this route of non-preparedness. You may then begin to wonder, ‘What are the basic things I need to do before I dive into writing?’ Don’t put pen to paper without first setting your objective. Determine why you want to write the report. Next, determine who your audience is and what information you will need to give them. After that, prepare your skeletal framework by drawing up an outline of what you want to write. See if it adds up or if you need to revise the outline. Such an outline helps you have the focus of your writing and keep your reader in mind. It also helps you ensure you know what information you will need to gather and show you what guidelines to follow when writing each section. Of course, this is a lot of work, but the foundational work sets the tone for you to get it right. We will now see how to achieve each of these practical steps outlined here.
The first step is to set your objective. Why is this important? If you are unsure of your objective, you wouldn’t know exactly what you are going to be writing about and how you are going to go about it. Thus, it is essential that you be sure of the purpose of your report. Once certain about the purpose, you can then decide what information to include or exclude. You can be better positioned to pitch the report at the right level, and you will find it easier to write the report. Some prefer to call the objective ‘Terms of Reference’, just so you are in the know. And having it clearly in mind helps you keep at the back of your mind the relevant information that should be in your report.
Keep in mind that an objective is not to be seen from the point of view of what you want to write. It is about what you intend to achieve. Of course, writing a research report is not an objective but a task. Hence, the objective is to extend the readers’ knowledge of the world by reducing their uncertainty and increasing their understanding of it. This world refers to your area of specialisation. For example, writing a trouble-shooting report is not an objective but a task. You might wonder, ‘what then is the objective?’ Here: to locate the cause of some problem and then suggest ways to remove or treat it. That simple objective should be the focus of your effort. So, what do you want to achieve? Importantly, what results are you hoping for? What do you want to happen next? To answer these questions, you will have to identify the basics – your objective – before you can concentrate on effectively communicating your message to your audience.
If you think of the possible overall objectives for a report writer, you could have the following: to inform; to describe; to explain; to instruct; to evaluate; to provoke debate; and to persuade. However, you may reason that these objectives are too general. There may be a need to be more specific. On the objective of informing, you can be specific by adding information on whom you want to inform. Perhaps you want to inform sales staff of the details of the commissioning of the Dangote Refinery and how it can benefit their cause. Being specific in your objective and precisely naming it helps you to prepare a detailed and focused report. In fact, you can write your objective in one sentence so that it is easy to track it.
Imagine a scenario where the objective was not clearly defined, and you have spent a vast amount of time writing a report. Chances are that you would have wasted your time and would need to start all over as soon as you have done what you ought to have done at the very beginning – confirming what your specific objective is, and reconfirming from anyone else who is a major stakeholder that the objective meets their expectation.
I will discuss the other steps in next week’s article.