The Happy Face Report: Change The World Forever.

In the spirit of not continuing to waste time, money, and trees, I propose agencies and consultants adopt

the immediate use of The Happy Face Report as the primary way to periodically communicate your progress on projects and results from campaigns.

The idea for The Happy Face Report came to me in the form of a tirade that a prospect of mine was having one day.  “I’m so sick of reams of meaningless data that I have to sift through.” she said.  “I wish I could have a one page report that simply had a big smiley face or a frowning face on it.  And if it’s a frowning face, then have recommendations telling me what you are going to do to “turn that frown upside down”.

Brilliant, I thought!

Dashboards were created, and are still presumably used, to solve the problem of data overload.  But let’s be honest, all too often dashboards grown into beasts so large and confusing that we kind of end up back

at square one.

When can you use The Happy Face Report?  When your client is entrusting you with the overall outcome of a clearly defined initiative.  They trust you with the details.  So who is it serving to proactively share anything beyond the happy or frowning face unless specifically requested?  No one, assuming both you and the client have better things to do with your time.

Why The Happy Face Report?

• The Happy Face Report requires, encourages, and breeds trust and accountability between all parties.
• The Happy Face Report forces us to focus on what really matters. (Hint: It’s not spinning a fancy narrative, or formatting a few pretty spreadsheets).  If it’s not clear what really matters, you should go must go back to square one and define it.
• The Happy Face Report promotes more effective leadership.
• The Happy Face Report saves massive amounts of time, paper, and lost productivity.
• The Happy Face Report eliminates long, drawn out, and often ineffective conference calls to “walk us through the report”.
• The Happy Face Report causes us to think carefully about whom we really want to do business with.  First, define Happy for yourself and then think to yourself, “Can I make this prospective client Happy?”.

In a perfect world there would be no reports, just self-evident results.   But if part of your business requires you to produce reports, or if you are a client and you insist on having them, let’s start a movement that takes us away from charts, tables, and verbose narratives and toward a world full of happy faces. : )