The Resourceful Reporter, Part 3: Incident Reports

Incident reports are the second of nine descriptive reports appearing in this series. Employees write incident reports when a "reportable" event occurs. What is reportable depends on the industry and business, but the law greatly influences whether an incident report is necessary. For instance, issues of occupational health and safety (e.g., operator exposure to toxic fumes), environmental safety (e.g., a chemical fire outside the enclosed facility), and human misconduct (e.g., sexual harassment) are not only reportable but required by law. 

Incident reports can cover a wide range of issues, but they generally answer these questions:

• What happened?
• When did it end?
• Where did it happen?
• How did it happen?
• Who was involved?
• Was anyone injured?
• Was any equipment or property damaged? 
• What immediate actions were taken to end or mitigate the event?

The question of why the event happened may or may not be a reportable factor. For instance, it would make sense to describe why an electrical fire in the office pantry occurred to prevent its recurrence. On the other hand, if an employee punches another employee in the face during an argument, the why is unnecessary, because a physical assault is immediate grounds for termination, even for represented (union) employees, in many cases. 

Here are some pointers based on the most common questions I get about reporting: 

Rely on the conventions of your field. Incident reports vary by business. Police officers' arrest reports follow a different protocol from, say corporate investigators' case reports documenting employee misconduct, or healthcare counselors' incident reports describing accidents of service recipients. Do not reinvent the wheel; use the organizational incident report template.

Advocate for improvements. Just because your company template is standard throughout the organization does not mean it is etched in stone. If you see an opportunity for improvement, think it over. Once you are convinced you have a useful improvement, recommend it to management. Examples include something as small as allow more space on the form to describe the event, or more weighty items, such as separate contributing causes from the root cause or include a recommendation to management section. 

Maintain objectivity. Do not offer your opinion. If the accident was horrible, do not say so; just describe it precisely. Examples include a 5 mm-wide X 20 mm-long cut, not an awful gash; the operator walked away from the area, not the operator was grossly negligent; he gave contradictory statements and describe them, not he lied one way or another). Remember: this is a descriptive report, not an analytical one.

The Resourceful Reporter, Part 2: Meeting Reports

Descriptive reports are a good starting point for reviewing reports, because they are the foundation for the more complex and challenging analytical and persuasive reports. The first of nine descriptive reports for review is the meeting summary, also known as meeting minutes, so dreaded because junior associates are usually responsible for writing about what transpired at a meeting dominated by senior staff. How do they write about a difference of opinion between two executives on a critical project? How should they know what to include and what to delete in a report of a seemingly interminable meeting?

More than five years ago, I included a meeting review template on this blog. It basically includes these points:

• Opening – date, time, site, attendees, manager, and purpose of meeting
• Discussion – for each agenda item: issue discussed, action item, owner, timeline
• Closing – date, site, site, attendees, manager, and purpose of next meeting, invitation to amend meeting review

One more point: use active voice. Instead of writing It was agreed to suspend the program, write Casey and Hunter agreed to suspend the program; instead of Phase 3 of the project was presented, write Charlie presented Phase 3 of the project. After all, meeting reviews are about transparency, as are all reports. 

The Resourceful Reporter, Part 1: The Territory

This post begins a 25-part series on business and technical report writing. Whether for government or nongovernment organizations, nonprofit or for-profit businesses—in fact, for any work-related activity—reports fall into three general types: descriptive, analytical, and persuasive.

Descriptive Reports –  Answers questions like:

• What does it look/sound/smell/taste/feel like?
• How does it work?
• How is it done?
• What happened?
• What did you do about it?
• What is the current condition?

Analytical Reports – Besides answering questions of descriptive reports, it also answers questions like:

• How did you determine the cause and solution?
• Why did it happen?
• How can it be changed/perpetuated/terminated?
• What can we do to prevent/induce its recurrence?
• What resources will be necessary?

Persuasive Reports – Besides answering questions of descriptive and analytical reports, it also answers questions like:

• What are the available options?
• Which is the best option?
• Why is it the best option?
• What are the benefits of pursuing the recommendation?
• What can go wrong in pursuing the recommendation?
• How will we mitigate/prevent problems during implementation?

Some of these questions may overlap, and most reports demand answers to more than these questions, but they are a good start. Throughout the series, I'll be looking at several reports of each type to examine their unique issues. 

BOOK BRIEF: On Self-educating

The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had by Susan Wise Bauer. W. W. Norton, 2003. 432 pages. 

Of course, there are many ways to self-educate. And I am well aware of the widespread academic and political aversion to all things classical. Yet I cannot pick up the writing of Maya Angelou without seeing influences of Walt Whitman, or of James Baldwin without Henry James, or of Toni Morrison without William Faulkner, or of Cornel West without Plato, or of August Wilson without William Shakespeare. Incidentally, I believe that Angelou, Baldwin, Morrison, West, and Wilson too deserve a prominent and secure place in classic literature. Yet I hold this conviction about the value literary ancestry in the same way I remain convinced that rock and roll has its roots in jazz. Reading almost any book is a good thing, but the act itself evolves into a great thing when understanding the relevant works preceding it and the authors who inspired the writer. 

You would agree with this mindset if you read to your benefit Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren's classic How to Read a Book, which I reviewed on this blog nine years ago. As a refresher to this, well, classic, you might also want to read Susan Wise Bauer's The Well-Educated Mind. Bauer affirms Adler's premises about active reading as an indispensable means of self-education, and she extends his assertions by encouraging journaling about your reading experience to uncover authors' ideas and intentions and to document your own emotional and intellectual reactions to them. Her systematic approach to this practice is useful for other activities, such as studying for exams, researching for a book you wish to write, or mastering any intellectual discipline. 

Like Adler, she reserves chapters for studying different genres, including novels, memoir, history, drama, and poetry. After suggesting a practical and challenging reading technique—all worthwhile accomplishments come from diligence—Bauer uses the final three-fourths of the book covering classics through her own journaling experience. Scores of authors from Herodotus to Langston Hughes, and great works from the King James Bible to Seamus Heaney's Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966 - 1996, find their way into the discussion. 

In laying down a reading list for a lifetime, Bauer also offers a practical way to tackle the material: Don't worry about not understanding everything you're reading the first time; serious reading takes multiple passes through the narrative. Ask specific questions while reading, from a basic What does this writer want me to know or believe? to a deeper Have I experienced what the writer wants me to experience? Still more rewarding, share your observations and assessments with a reading partner. 

You'll get the tips you need to start on this worthwhile endeavor of self-education through the classics, which will make you a more critical reader of all topics that fit your fancy. And you'll thank Susan Wise Bauer for the roadmap.

BOOK BRIEF: The Psychology (and Philosophy) of Time Management

The New Science of Time Management: Why Emotional Awareness Matters Most for Control of Your Schedule by Robby Slaughter. Method Press 2019. 225 pages.

You have to be intrigued by a book on time management whose first sentence is "Let's face it: You can't really manage your time." In starting with such an assertion, Robby Slaughter sets a high bar for us to continue reading, as well as for himself to justify his approach to the topic, as he immediately makes clear this book is not the usual rose-colored how-to treatment of our most precious resource: time.   

Like me, you might have read a lot of books on time management, applied their principles, and when eventually reverting to your own habits and rituals, held fast to one, at most two, recommended techniques before they too fade in the turmoil of a pressure-packed period when your time management depended on others who have their own conflicting priorities. How can you manage your own time when running from one emergency to another fraught with unavoidable project-derailing delays, seemingly endless damage control, and distracting political consequences?  

Slaughter unflinchingly and candidly explains it all in The New Science of Time Management. He describes case studies to illustrate universal theories from philosophy, psychology, and business, which he blends into his practical structured suggestions for time mastery. While reading under his spell, you will find yourself saying, "Now I know why I can't tell how long that job will take" (Kappa Effect/Tau Effect), "What's true for here is not necessarily true for there" (Learned Helplessness), "Oh, how I love getting things done" (Mindfulness), "I knew it!" (Social Loafing), "No wonder that happens to me" (Zeigarnik Effect), "That's what happens to my team" (Bystander Effect), and much more. For the deep thinkers, the author provides source material to back up his claims and encourage independent research on the studies and precepts he cites.

If you want a theoretical basis to justify or to discover your time management practices, successes, failures, and lessons learned, read The New Science of Time Management. At once. In spurts. Repeat.

The Art of Writing, Part 6: Logging

You should keep a daily production log, listing the date, time devoted to writing, words produced, daily and hourly averages, and whatever else you think would help in documenting your work. My log looks like this:

Some people might think this log borders on obsession, but it could be worse. I could have included precise to and from times, summaries of the writing done, and reactions to my productivity levels. But you don't have to resort to spreadsheets or soul searching. You can go low tech by simply jotting daily results in your journal.

Keeping such a log brings to writers at least six benefits:

1. Historical perspective. Remembering exactly when you wrote what and how long it took you can offers insights into project duration when discussing future manuscripts with publishers and editors. 

2. Business accounting. You can always refer to the log to see how much time you put into your craft.

3. Business value. If you get paid for your writing, you can estimate what you earn per hour and whether you need to adjust your rates.

4. Developmental progress. You can now start comparing how quickly you wrote Novel A with Novel B, or your 2018 workload with your 2021 workload. This review provides an excellent way to assess your output.

5. Keeping honest. Once you start logging, you can no longer fool others, especially yourself, when you say, "I write every day" if you see a four-day gap in your production log.

6. Feeling accomplished. I've saved the best benefit for last. Logging helps you to get over saying, "I haven't done enough" or asking, "Where has the time gone?" You now have proof that you've done enough, and you know precisely where the time has gone.

No excuses. Start logging.

The Art of Writing, Part 5: Fact-Checking

Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, a play or a poem, you need to check your facts to prove you're reliable source. If you're writing about post-World War II Paris in 1946, you'll want to make sure you capture the Louvre as it looked then, without the I. M. Pei-designed glass pyramid built in 1988. Even if you lived in New York City on September 11, 2001 and are writing a memoir about your experience on that day, you would want to be careful about describing area landmarks, like the Oculus and the Vessel, which did not exist on the day of the terrorist attacks. Your article about Mickey Mantle would lose credibility if it confused his rookie year (1951) with his breakout year (1952). Likewise, a short story set in 1961 Republic of the Congo would irritate informed readers if you mixed up Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba's murderer, Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, and Lumumba's successor, Joseph Iléo. Get your facts right!

One effective fact-checking method is using multiple sources, which is easy enough in these days of pervasive information availability. (If only everyone would employ this technique when reading ridiculous conspiracy theories, such as former US President Barack Obama's citizenship!) While I am a fan of Wikipedia, I would not end my research there. Say you wanted to write a piece about the birther phenomenon surrounding Obama's citizenship. You might want to read the nearly 12,000-word Wikipedia entry on the topic, but you could also refer to several of the sources listed in its 281 footnotes. It would help to read facts and opinions from both liberal and conservative sources, and even extremist ones, to understand the range of ideas on the issue. Then you need to be skilled in separating fact from fantasy.