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R. Shekar

Ravi Malhotra, Executive Assistant to the Country Head of a foreign bank, found his job extremely demanding. His job was to create a five-line management brief out of an average of five contracts, 20 reports and about seven presentations daily and put up to the senior management team to act upon. Six hours out of a typical 10-hour day was consumed in doing just that.

The senior management appreciated Ravi’s efforts but was concerned about the ‘nasty surprises’ that hit them with alarming regularity. They commissioned their resident executive coach, Graham Ravenhall, from the headquarters.

In response to Ravi’s predicament, Graham suggested categorising the reports according to the source of data (X-axis) and the user needs (Y-axis) so that all reports did not cry for attention at the same time!

White paper was the summary of information available from a public medium (news items, web sites, industry journals) targeted at anyone and everyone in the organisation. As a mere collage of current happenings it encourages the reader to derive an appropriate benefit. Example: Continuity of support from foreign institutional investors to the Indian stock market.

Position paper is also meant for generic consumption but drawn from a classified source or contributed by a subject matter expert pointing to a trend or alerting to an opportunity in the immediate future. Example: Emerging trends in patterns of investment across equity shares, metals and real-estate.

Management abstract extends the knowledge available in a public medium to bear upon a pressing issue or opportunity that may be highly relevant to a designated target audience. Example: Implications of global crisis in the sub-prime lending market to the NRI deposits held with our bank?

Quick study may be a ‘spot report’ generated to supplement or validate a viewpoint using data gathered on a specific purpose from a targeted source or population. Example: Validating the scores of Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty with a limited sample of field visits to customers.

Ravi received a surprise gift of a silk tie for Christmas with a note of appreciation from the Country Head thanking him for sparing everyone the agony of needless information overload and releasing the available management bandwidth to execute decisions better. He was touched.

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