Oh, the lowly weekly status report. Most everyone has to do them. Most of us hate writing them.
But, there is gold in status reports, for those who are willing to think their purpose through and deliver.
Status reports are communication tools
Yet, the lowly status report is a practical way — sometimes the only way — to communicate your accomplishments for the week. Passing communications with your manager don’t cut it. Because no one can remember the update for anything past one or two items and then only for what is happening that day. Doing one or two significant accomplishments each day doesn’t seem like much until put into a weekly context. Having five to ten significant accomplishments for the week places you in a different light.
Status reports are a record of your accomplishments
One of the most difficult lists to keep is your list of accomplishments. It is not as though you will always remember to go out to that resume performance review file and list yet another completion. We forget. We delay. We procrastinate.
Yet, the weekly status report can be the perfect vehicle for storing our accomplishments for both reviews and resumes. By placing our accomplishments in electronic writing, we document what we have done with our work.
Take a new look at your status report. Look at it as the communications tool and accomplishment repository of your work. I’ll help you do that over this week as we move the lowly status report up the career management tool set chain.
Scot
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Scot, thanks for reminding me of what a valuable tool the status report can be for keeping track of one’s weekly accomplishments. I used to make it a habit to review the month’s reports and transfer accomplishments to a list with a few notes to use at the annual review. Another thing it’s great for is looking for patterns in areas or identifying the build up of new skills or experiences.
Robyn — right on the money.
A good addition, too. Using the status reports as what you have done to build up new skills allows you to “build a story” of additional skills and how they were put into practice.
Thanks for the great addition.