“Book report” audit reports are out!

They take too much time to write and edit. Too long to issue. Too long to read and understand.

You have options for your audit report template. Portrait. Landscape. Word, PowerPoint, Excel (yes, I’ve seen audit reports in Excel). Tables. Charts. Graphs. Images. Text.

That last one has put a bee in my bonnet.

Hear me out.

One of my clients has moved on to become CAE at a new employer and has brought me in to collaborate with their team to streamline their audit report process, consult on the new template they want to implement in their new team, write their style guide, and deliver training. I’m always happy when that happens!

But red flags popped up immediately when they sent me their proposed new template. Why?

First flag: I’d worked with them at their previous employer, knew that report template, and knew their style guide. Neither was effective. Frankly, their reports were way too long, book reports in Word format, with findings that were pages long. Reports 30 to 45 pages long – FULL of paragraph after paragraph of text. And they weren’t open to suggestions to refine it.

Could I still teach them how to write better audit reports while working within those constraints? Absolutely. I haven’t seen an audit report yet or collaborated with a team yet that I couldn’t help improve and optimize in some way.

Second flag: At their new employer, my client wanted to move from the existing overly complicated PowerPoint slides in use for reporting to the report format of his old employer.

Stop the presses!

There were a lot of positive things about the existing PowerPoint reports (PowerPoint not being one of them), but nonetheless, some very good, if chaotic and inconsistent presentation of audit results.

So, what happened?

I went in for a half day to coach my client and their new leadership team. I presented options and alternatives, best practice from working with hundreds of clients, talked about constraints and limitations, benefits and risks, and let them come to some realizations and conclusions about their proposed new “book report” format report template.

Thankfully, they chose to do a complete makeover of their “book report” template.

Out with the old look and in with the new!

The revised template was now a snappy, low-text report with some very insightful information on the one-page executive summary. And long findings? No chance with this format.

And now?

I’m running the fifth and final workshop with their global team next week. All 80 will have been trained on how to use the new template, how to write in an action-oriented, stakeholder-focused way, and practiced how to write the toughest parts of the report: the areas where they now need to give insight and foresight, because they haven’t had to do that in the past.

And the new style guide will be ready by the end of that training.

So many learning points with this client experience, for them and for me, which is very satisfying. Happy client, happy life!

This is not an isolated issue!

I went back to another long-term client the following week. It had been two years since I’d seen their audit reports…

Book reports!!! “Creep” had set in, so they were back to 2-page executive summaries, 3-page background sections, and multi-page findings.

Ouch!

I’ll be collaborating with that team again in Q1-24 to help them reign the writing and content back in.

If this story resonates with you, get in touch. I’ll spend 20 minutes with you and give you one solid piece of advice for you to enhance your specific audit reports. It would be my pleasure. Happy New Year