Why weekly reports fail
Too long. Too many numbers. No clear "so what?" The reader has to do the work you should have done. They have to figure out what matters. They have to decide what to do. By the time they're done, they've spent ten minutes and they're not sure they learned anything. So next week they skim. Then they skip. The report becomes noise. Another thing in the inbox that doesn't get read.
The failure is usually a design failure. The report was built to show everything. To be comprehensive. To cover all the bases. Nobody asked: what's the one question this report should answer? If the answer is "how are we doing?" then the report should answer that in thirty seconds. One goal. A few numbers. What moved. What to do. If it takes five minutes to read, you've lost. If the "so what?" isn't obvious, you've lost. The reader shouldn't have to work. You should have done the work for them.
What gets read
One goal. Two to four numbers that support it. A line or two on what moved (or didn't). A link to the product journal for "why." That's it. Not a novel. Not a spreadsheet. Not every metric you track. The few numbers that matter for the current focus. The reader glances. They get it. They're done. If they want to dig in, they click through to the journal. If they don't, they're still in the loop. Thirty seconds. That's the bar.
What gets read is also what's predictable. Same day. Same format. The team knows when to expect it. They know where to look. They know what they're going to see. Predictability builds the habit. When the report is different every week, or when it lands at random times, people stop relying on it. When it's Monday 9am, same structure, same place, they start to look for it. The format is part of the design. Consistency is a feature.
Same day, same format
Predictability builds the habit. Monday 9am. Same structure. The team knows where to look. They don't have to search. They don't have to remember. The report is there. They read it or they don't. But they know it's there. That predictability is what turns a report from an occasional glance into a ritual. Rituals get followed. One-off reports get forgotten.
Same format means the same sections. The focus. The numbers. What moved. Link to the journal. Don't reinvent the layout every week. Don't add new sections because something interesting happened. Keep it simple. Keep it the same. The reader's brain gets used to it. They know where to find the number. They know where to find the "why." Less cognitive load. More chance they'll actually read it.
How we built that in AppFit
Weekly email with the focus metric and key changes. One click to the journal. No novel. No spreadsheet. The email is the report. It lands at the same time every week. It has the same structure. The numbers that matter for your current focus. What moved, up or down. A link to the product journal so when someone asks "why did that happen?" the answer is one click away. The goal is to answer "how are we doing?" in thirty seconds. If you want to dig in, you open AppFit and look at the full timeline. If you don't, you're still informed. That's the report people actually read. Short. Predictable. Actionable.
