One screen that tells executives what a longer report found and what they're being asked to decide.
Executives read the summary and, most weeks, nothing else. So an executive summary has to carry the whole decision without the report behind it: what you found, what you recommend, what it costs. This one, for an invented 13-store shoe retailer, stands in front of a 34-page review of whether to close its two smallest stores. Take the shape, and write yours from a finished report.
Who it's for
An analyst, a finance lead or a manager who has done the long work and now needs a decision from people with ten minutes. Send it a few days before the meeting, with the full report alongside for anyone checking a figure.
It can't come first. If you don't yet know what you'd recommend, writing the summary won't tell you.
What a good one contains
- The answer, before anything else. Under the title's question sits "Close one, and keep the other only at a lower rent." A reader who stops there still knows your position.
- The situation in three sentences. How big it is, what's wrong, and why it can't wait: $1.2 million of $21.4 million in sales, a $140,000 loss, two leases ending within 14 months.
- Three findings, one number each. −$118,000, $22.50 and 31%. The report may hold thirty findings. These three change the decision, and each cites its page so a doubter can go and look.
- A recommendation someone can vote on. A store, a date and a condition: close Pike Crossing on March 27, and renew Halsey Street only at $22.50 a square foot or less.
- The cost, and what comes back. $146,000 once against $182,000 a year, with the payback already worked out: about 10 months, or 15 if no customer follows.
- What happens next, with names. Five dated steps, each with an owner. The second is telling the seven staff in person before anyone else hears.
- What you're less sure of. The 25% assumption rests on a single earlier closure, and the page says so.
Three ways a summary fails
The first is describing the report when you should summarize it. "This review examines store performance across four dimensions" tells an executive nothing. Write the findings themselves, with their numbers.
The second is disagreeing with your own report. Copy each figure from the final version, then check it against the page you cite. If the report says $118,000 and the summary says "about $120,000," someone will ask which is right, and the meeting goes there.
The third is length. Tanbark's takes about one screen on a laptop, because whatever doesn't change the decision stayed in the report.
How to send it
To named people. It names a store that may close and seven jobs, days before those staff are told. Limit it to the leadership team by name.
Every page you publish gets one link that opens in any browser. You choose who can open it: anyone with the link, anyone with the password, or only the people and company domains you name, who sign in with Google or Microsoft. Change the page later and the link stays the same.
