How do you put a report/presentations together for your boss?

Make things simple and clear. Bosses are usually very busy so u might want to do that. Also, i feel the summary at the beginning of the a report is the most crucial because most busy people usually go to that page first to understand what the whole report is about and if he is interested then he will most likely to carry on reading the xtras, so pay more attention to it.

Just wanna add somemore

I feel tables are crappy way to show datas, Sort them out and present them in graphs

Be simple, concise, use “numbered lists” when communicating through a report. Your boss doesn’t want to read an essay about your accomplishments. Instead consider using a simple numbered lists.

> Through improvements in process we have accomplished the following
> 1. YTD Increase of 10% in blah
> 2. Quarterly decrease of 36% of blah
> 3. Awesome stability in Blah

Be ready to deep-dive on any of the topics if your boss becomes interested. I find that (good) executives will always deep dive on about 10% of the items, sometimes at random – or sometimes as interest peaks. There is no need to go into the details on everything, thats why you were hired! to filter out all the BS to begin with.

Good luck, be confident!

I would make one excellent visual report for him in some kind of cool binding. As if it were going to be presented to a crowd—don’t stint. It will show him respect and that you really care about the report.

Obviously, it should also be well written and clear and come up with some kind of original conclusion that illustrates what has been learned by this work.

If it is the kind of report that is done annually, pull out the old one (or any report that you know the boss approved of) and check out the format used, the style, the packaging. Not that you necessarily have to copy it completely, but, it will give you an idea of what the company/boss has approved in the past and what kind of style is expected for reports at this job.

try www.kineticast.com

Print in high quality and use a decent report cover (a la these )

I can’t emphasize enough that mea05key is completely right about providing an Executive Summary. Put the key points from each part of the report right up front in a page to a page and a half. (Including a financial summary if there is a financial component).

Use a Table of Contents. (So the boss can skip to particular areas of interest.)

Organize your information into logical, digestible sections.

Presentation is less important than quality of content.

Good luck.

Thanks for all the great tips everyone.

I was looking more for the “completed book” and/or binder solution rather than the “how to” do the report. (like a leather binder, or “go to kinkos and use the sticker8000 machine etc.)

But all the answers are great non the less.

You are going to hate this, but all of our reports are done on Powerpoint. <shame>

If we have to hand out a hard copy, we sleeve-bind it with a clear cover.

I agree with goldmine178. I’ve been using www.kineticast.com for all kinds of presentations. Among other things, its great for sending sensitive presentations. Since the presentation is online, all your sending your boss is a link. You’ll be able to control the link and have it automatically be disabled after a specified number of views, after a specific date or you can at any time log into your account and turn the link/presentation off. If you like PowerPoint, you can actually create your presentation in PowerPoint and then just upload it into kineticast. Once it’s in kineticast, I can add video (captured with my webcam) and embed downloadable documents. It is a very cool tool. I am a sales person and use it for just about every step in the sales process – from prospecting to implementation. Since there’s tracking, it gives me great insight into who’s interested and who’s not and what about my presentation they’re interested in (it even tells me how much time the person spends on each slide). This will be nice for you too in that I’m sure you wouldn’t mind know how much time your boss spends looking at this and what in particular she is most interested in. I hope this helps!