I finally stopped ignoring my manager's feedback about my reports

My boss kept saying my weekly status reports were too detailed and no one read them. I got defensive at first because I thought more info was better. After she showed me that only 3 out of 8 team leads even opened the full document, I switched to a one-page summary with bullet points. Now I spend 20 minutes instead of 2 hours on each report. Has anyone else had to simplify their work after realizing nobody actually reads the long version?

2 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

2 Comments

wright.dakota5mo ago

My buddy at a logistics company spent three days building this massive dashboard for his boss, then found out the guy only ever looked at the "on-time delivery" percentage in the top corner. He redid the whole thing as a single number with a green or red color and said nobody even noticed the difference. Now he just sends that one number in an email every Monday and calls it done lol.

8

patricia_kelly5mo ago

Respectfully, I see this a little different. A single number might get the job done for that one boss, but it misses the whole story behind the number. If that on-time delivery number dips from green to red, nobody will know if it was a weather delay, a carrier issue, or a system problem without the context of the other metrics. The dashboard was overkill for sure, but stripping it all the way down to one number is almost as bad as ignoring it in the first place. Might not be popular, but I think a simple middle ground with maybe three or four key numbers and a quick note would serve everyone better than either extreme.

5