The Weekly Reporting Method
One simple and popular communications method is called the weekly reporting method: every employee composes an e-mail report, once a week, including information on their activities in the preceding week, their plans for the following week, and any other information deemed relevant to the larger group, bearing in mind length considerations. Reports are sent to managers, who summarize and report to their own managers, eventually leading to an overall summary led by the CEO, which is then sent to the board of directors. The CEO then sends the board's summary back down the ladder, where each manager can append an additional summary or note before referring it to their employees.
Eventually, each employee will receive a long e-mail, containing many or all of the above-mentioned summaries, from every level of management; reading the full result is rarely a requirement. Curious or ambitious employees are considered more likely to read the result; task-centered employees, however, are not.
Read more about this topic: Communications Management
Famous quotes containing the words weekly, reporting and/or method:
“The intent of matrimony, is not for man and wife to be always taken up with each other, but jointly to discharge the duties of civil society, to govern their family with prudence, and educate their children with discretion.”
—Anonymous, U.S. women’s magazine contributor. Weekly Visitor or Ladies Miscellany (June 1807)
“I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.”
—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)
“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand idly by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)