Executive Reporting: What They Want To Know Vs. What They Need To Know

If you were to ask the members of your organization’s executive team whether they feel focused on strategy (the elements most important to your organization) during executive team meetings, many would say yes. For far too many organizations, that isn’t the case. The executive team may believe their meetings are productive, but they’re more likely caught up in day-to-day operations than they are in high-level strategy concerns.

For example, the executive team of a fast-growing company might spend all their time on new site locations or challenges with new construction, and neglect conversations about hiring the right people to put in those locations or determining the right retail strategies for each.

We’ve seen too many executive teams waste the precious little time they have together talking about what they want to know, not what they actually need to know. Below are the differences, and ways you can help your executive team get there.

What Executives Want To Know

1. They want to know any easy-to-measure KPIs or elements that are exciting from an operational standpoint. For example, many fast-growing organizations always discuss revenue and growth; public sector organizations and companies that are struggling tend to focus on costs or recent cuts. It’s not a bad thing to want to see this information, but it doesn’t always give the full picture to your executive team. Focusing on just one measure is misleading and may cause you to miss other areas of your strategy entirely.
2. They like to home in on the highest of highs and lowest of lows, and can sometimes get stuck in those areas. For example, if a store was opened in only two weeks and everything went off without a hitch, or if a store hasn’t opened for 10 months due to an unexpected delay, your executive team may want to discuss that success or frustration. These individual cases probably don’t have a lasting impact on your overall strategy, so they’re better discussed at happy hour, during lunch, or at the water cooler (if those still exist). If there’s a project an executive is passionate about, like a new sales software implementation or an upgrade to a manufacturing line, they should only share information about it that is critical to the strategy as a whole.
3. They want to give everyone equal time to speak during a meeting. Some executives may see this as common courtesy, but it’s not important to give everyone the same floor time during an executive meeting. For example, you may be dealing with a strategic challenge that has been going on for six months. If so, you may have only the two or three executives closest to the issue leading the meetings during that time. You still consider everyone’s thoughts, but not everyone needs precisely the same amount of time to share in each meeting.

What Executives Need To Know

1. They should be discussing the strategy as a whole. These discussions are cross-functional and should keep strategy at the center. They should include discussions of multiple objectives across multiple perspectives, and recognize contributions from those involved. These meetings should also refer to applicable measures as a way of understanding and discussing progress toward these high-level goals. The meeting should home in on anything that has a direct influence on your organization’s strategy.
2. Executives need to come prepared. An executive meeting is the most expensive meeting you have as a company, so make the most of it. Everyone involved should be prepared so they aren’t looking at information for the first time in the meeting. You can help by distributing information ahead of time so they can focus on the issues and not the data. Then executives won’t waste time interpreting measures or questioning charts, and can instead spend time discussing the implications of the data and action plans for whatever’s discussed.
3. The leadership team needs to take responsibility for the next steps and action items that arise from the meeting. You can help by capturing these next steps in writing, finding out who’s responsible for each, assigning the tasks, and setting deadlines. We also recommend you follow up with the people you assigned and confirm they’ve done the work so you can eventually report back on results.

Are your executive reporting meetings as valuable as they could be?

To find out, we recommend you share with executives the purpose of executive meetings, which is to work together to solve strategic challenges in your organization. Then ask specific questions about the value of your current meetings. You could ask:

• Do you feel as though these meetings emphasize our organization’s strategy?
• Are these meetings covering certain elements (or all) of our strategy appropriately?
• Do you feel as though the right people contribute during these meetings?

The answers will show you how the executive reporting meetings should change. Once the executives are on board with changes, it may be a good idea to step in and facilitate the first few meetings (to help executives inclined to talk about their pet projects break the habit, for example).