In the early days of my career, I worked for a chief executive who had what you might politely call a very succinct style when it came to requesting a report from staff members.
You’d be sitting at your desk when the CEO would walk past, point at you and say, ‘I need a report on [subject] by Thursday.’ If you were lucky, you heard. If not, you relied on your colleagues to pass the commission on to you.
With such a vague request to go on, the report always took ages to write and was almost always met with a negative response. You felt awful as the writer of the report, and the CEO was disappointed. Nobody was happy.
My question for you is this: what is your team’s experience like when you request a report from them? Have you ever had a report back from them that wasn’t what you wanted? Is it possible that the reason is, at least partly, to do with how they were briefed?
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