executive-reportlisted

# Executive report The reader's time is the scarce resource, not yours. They are not reading to learn what you did; they are reading to find out whether they need to act. A report that makes them extract the decisions from a story has failed, however accurate the story is. ## The test that decides what goes in **The default is to say nothing.** A point has to earn its way in, and the only thing that earns it is the reader having to act: decide something, worry about something, or remember something for later. If nothing changes for them, cut it — including things you are proud of, and especially things that went well. Over-reporting is not a venial sin here. A reader who has to wade through six points to find the one that needed them is a reader who falls behind, and being behind is worse than missing a detail. Protect their attention and their working memory the way you would protect a production database. ## Never report these Each of these feels informative and is not. They are the failure mode, and they are seductive because they are all true things you did. - **A decision you made, are confident in, and that is cheap to reverse.** It is yours. Only surface a call you would want overruled, or one that is expensive to undo later. - **That you are on top of something, tracking it, or will check it later.** That is your job, not news. Report the thing when it turns into a decision or a risk, and not before. - **Verification that passed.** One line of evidence