At PwC India I ran structured leadership reporting and business reviews and secured CXO buy-in on 20+ recommendations. At ZenCabs the equivalent was a weekly KPI review with the founder. Both taught me that a short document with a fixed shape does more work than a long one. This is the monthly version, for a founder, a board or investors.

The template

  1. Headline: one sentence on the month, the way you would say it to someone in a lift.
  2. Numbers against plan: the five or six numbers the business runs on, with this month, last month, plan and a short note on each miss.
  3. What went wrong: the two or three problems, with the cause and what is being done.
  4. What went well: the two or three wins, with the reason, so it can be repeated.
  5. Decisions needed: anything the reader has to decide, with a recommendation.
  6. Asks: specific help, such as an introduction, a hire or a customer.
  7. Next month: the three things that will be different in thirty days.

Why bad news goes near the top

A reader who finds a problem buried on page three stops trusting the rest of the page. Put what went wrong before what went well, with the cause and the plan. It is also self-protection: problems reported early are problems the reader shares, and problems found late are problems the writer owns alone.

Why the same shape every month

When the layout never changes, the reader can compare months at a glance and spot the one number that moved. Every redesign costs them a month of relearning where to look. The discipline is the same as the one-page sheet in a weekly review.

Decisions and asks make the update useful

An update that only reports is read and filed. One that asks for a decision, with a recommendation and a deadline, gets a response. A recommendation that arrives with a number, an owner and a first step is easier to approve, because the conversation can be about when to start.

What to leave out

  • Activity lists. What the team did matters less than what changed.
  • Numbers without a comparison to plan or last month.
  • Every metric the business tracks. The detail lives elsewhere; link to it.
  • Good news without a reason, which cannot be repeated.

The weekly version of this discipline is in the weekly review that took driver-side cancellations from 40% to 6%.