The art of report writing

I know! You are thinking shouldn’t it be the science of report writing? How come I have classified it as art? Well it just takes about an year of B school living to bring you to this stage. You realize there are some things that can be done methodically, mechanically just like filling up some bland template. But there are others, where your creativity comes forth, like a specialist chef preparing a mouth watering delicacy or an expert sculptor chilling out the finer nuances of some classic statue. Report writing my friends, is in the same league of fine arts.

Now once you land in a B school you realize that you are dishing out reports left, right and centre life never before. So after honing my skills on it for over a year what are the tricks of the trade I can pass on? After all these should be some method to the madness.

Primary research is waste, trust only copy paste!

Every MBA student has a God. No, it aint Kotler, it aint Warren Buffet or George Soros. It is some thing far beyond the reach of these lesser mortals. The tiny little idea in the heads of Sergy Brin and Larry Page today is the mother of all gyan today. Google my friends, is the answer to all problems. Believe it or not sometimes you will get the entire report that you have to prepare online, neat and ready to be downloaded. If you aren’t that lucky, don’t fret. There is always some para, some figure, some table, and some data that will fit into your scheme of things. Its just about the super googling skills that will come into play. Once you learn the art of googling my friend, there is no stopping your juggernaut.

Mole hills to mountains

There is no denying the fact that what you are putting in the report is the most mundane, oft repeated bull shit that everyone in your class has put in. So what makes you special? What is your USP? It’s simple! Exaggerate! Till the last full stop you put on your report make use of every possible opportunity to blow the scope. An innocuous table is made into a ‘comprehensive database’; a simple source of data is transformed into ‘well-ground research’; a simple method is labeled as a ‘storyboard approach’; ordinary people from the corporate world are promoted to ‘opinion leaders of the industry’! And believe me it works. No one wants a run of the mill non entity! A humdinger you expect; a humdinger you shall get!

Charts, tables, figures….and all that jazz

All MBAs feel insecure without quant stuff! It’s a disease if you ask me. It’s like a muddles lover going on one knee and saying “Darling, you complete me!” Every report will have a atleast have a couple of tables, some great diagrams, flowcharts, eye popping list of references and a truckload of number crunching. It doesn’t matter if it’s relevant to the topic or not! I know how to use the most complex excel functions and I am going to show off!

Chitti Chiiti Bang Bang!

An AK 47 can fire some hundred rounds in a second they. A MBA grad is worse. Bullet points spill across the pristine white paper like there is no tomorrow. Some wiseguy must have told in some communications class that the approach should be objective. So there you go! Every page has like a main heading, sub headings, sub topics under the subheadings and points under every subheading! I don’t even want to talk about the indentation. I think if there is some statistic similar to MIPS, maybe MBPR, millions of bullet points per report!

Just a little seasoning of Jargon!

Why do you think Chicken Tikka Masala is almost the national dish of UK? It’s spicy and its popular. If your report is the chicken breast, then the jargon my friend is the masala. Moving up the value chain, understanding the customer, minimizing turn around time, optimum utilization of resources, minimizing risk, change management…. It’s a shamelessly long list that is the bread and butter of every student. I really pity the profs who look at these reports (or do they?) Every year the same jargon, from every student, in every report, across all subjects! Man! It should be a pain going through them year after year!

It’s all in the packaging honey!

Double line page borders, delicate colors on excel sheets, fancy fonts, justifies paras, pivot tables, immaculate table of contents…you will get the most fancy of reports to the hilt. I some times wonder was more effort put on the report writing or the packaging. The popular proverb goes ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’. Let’s not talk about reports!

So that was the inside info about “the art of report writing” .Do you think you have it in you to be an artist as well? No issues. Just join a B school!