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Why Most Business Reports Are Absolute Rubbish (And How to Fix Yours)
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Here's a thought that'll make you uncomfortable: your last quarterly report probably put more people to sleep than a sedative. And before you get defensive, I'm not having a go at you personally. After 18 years consulting across Sydney's corporate landscape, I can tell you that 87% of business reports are mind-numbingly terrible. Yes, I made up that statistic, but spend five minutes in any boardroom and you'll know it's probably conservative.
The problem isn't that people can't write. Australians are perfectly capable of stringing sentences together when they're complaining about the weather or explaining why the Rabbitohs got robbed last weekend. But put them in front of a Word document with "Quarterly Performance Analysis" at the top, and suddenly they're writing like they've swallowed a dictionary of corporate buzzwords.
I learned this the hard way back in 2009 when I submitted what I thought was a brilliant market analysis to a mining company in Newcastle. Forty-three pages of dense prose, complete with subsections, appendices, and enough charts to wallpaper a small office. The CEO took one look at it during our presentation and said, "Mate, I asked for insights, not a bloody novel." That stung. But he was absolutely right.
The Real Problem with Business Reports
Most business reports fail because they're written by people who think more words equals more value. Wrong. Dead wrong.
Here's what actually happens: someone gets asked to write a report on sales performance. Instead of leading with "Sales dropped 15% because our pricing is uncompetitive," they write: "Following a comprehensive analysis of market dynamics and internal performance metrics, preliminary findings suggest a downward trajectory in revenue generation that may be attributed to various market-facing competitive pressures requiring strategic reassessment."
Good grief. That's not professional writing—that's corporate masturbation.
The second major problem? Most people don't understand their audience. A board report should read differently than a team update, which should read differently than a client proposal. But I've seen executives submit the same 20-page template for everything from budget approvals to incident reports. It's like wearing a tuxedo to the beach. Technically correct, completely inappropriate.
What Actually Works (From Someone Who's Done This Wrong)
Let me share what I've learned from writing hundreds of reports that actually got read, acted upon, and occasionally even praised:
Start with your conclusion. Not buried on page 47 between the methodology and the appendices. Right there, second paragraph. "This report recommends we increase our marketing budget by 30% to capture the emerging opportunities in Western Sydney." Done. Everything else is just supporting evidence.
Use headings that mean something. "Analysis" tells me nothing. "Why Our Customers Are Leaving" tells me exactly what I'm about to read. I once worked with a pharmaceutical company whose reports had headings like "Section 2.1.3" and "Operational Considerations." Absolute madness. People scan reports—give them something to scan for.
The Three-Page Rule
Here's a controversial opinion that'll upset half the consultants in Sydney: most business reports should be three pages maximum. Yes, even the important ones. Especially the important ones.
I've tested this with dozens of clients across different industries. Financial services, manufacturing, professional services, retail. Doesn't matter. When I help them compress their 15-page monsters into three focused pages, two things happen: more people read them, and decisions get made faster.
"But what about all the supporting data?" you ask. Put it in an appendix. Create a separate technical document. Send it as supporting material. But your actual report—the thing that busy executives will base decisions on—should respect their time.
There's psychological research behind this (something about cognitive load and attention spans), but you don't need a PhD to understand it. When did you last read a 20-page report cover to cover? Exactly.
The Sydney Business Writing Scene
Sydney's got this weird culture around business writing that I've never seen anywhere else. Maybe it's the tall poppy syndrome, but there's this belief that simple writing isn't sophisticated enough for serious business. Absolute nonsense.
I've worked with teams at Macquarie Bank who could explain complex derivatives in plain English during meetings, then write reports that read like they'd been translated from German by a robot. The content was identical—the clarity was worlds apart.
The best business writers I know in Sydney break all the traditional rules. They use contractions. They start sentences with "And" or "But." They write like they're talking to a colleague, not delivering a university lecture. Companies like Canva and Atlassian figured this out years ago. Their internal reports read like conversations, and somehow their billion-dollar valuations suggest this approach works fine.
Common Mistakes That Make Me Want to Scream
Using passive voice everywhere. "Mistakes were made" instead of "We stuffed up." "It was decided" instead of "The board chose." Passive voice is the refuge of people who don't want to take responsibility. It's also boring as hell.
Charts that require a magnifying glass to read. If I need to zoom in to understand your graph, you've failed. I once received a report where the legend was smaller than the warning text on cigarette packets. What's the point?
Executive summaries that aren't summaries. An executive summary should tell me everything I need to know in 200 words maximum. If someone reads only that section, they should understand your key points and recommendations. Instead, people write mini-reports calling them summaries.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Report Writing Training
Most companies approach report writing training like it's a technical skill—grammar rules, formatting guidelines, structure templates. That's like teaching someone to drive by explaining how engines work.
Writing better reports is mostly about thinking clearly. If you can't explain your point in one sentence, you probably don't understand it well enough to write a report about it. The writing problems are usually thinking problems in disguise.
I've run workshops where we spend the first hour just talking through what participants actually want to say. No writing, no computers, just conversation. Once they can articulate their message clearly in speech, the writing becomes infinitely easier.
The Future of Business Reports (Spoiler: It's Not What You Think)
Video reports are coming. Audio summaries. Interactive dashboards. Whatever replaces traditional written reports, it'll be faster to consume and easier to act upon.
But here's the thing: the fundamental skill—taking complex information and presenting it clearly—remains the same whether you're writing, speaking, or creating a PowerPoint deck. The medium changes; the need for clarity doesn't.
Bottom Line
Your reports should make decisions easier, not harder. They should save people time, not waste it. And they should sound like they were written by a human being who actually understands the business, not a committee of bureaucrats.
Most importantly, remember that every report you write is competing for attention with approximately 47 other documents, 127 emails, and whatever crisis emerged during lunch. Respect that competition. Make your report the one that actually gets read.
The next time someone asks you to write a report, start by asking: "What decision are we trying to make?" Then write exactly what they need to make that decision well. Everything else is just noise.
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