Rob Harrop

After reading my recent post, Answer the Obvious Questions, my friend Glyn Normington introduced me to Completed Staff Work.

I’d not heard of this before, but as I read the Wikipedia article, I realised I’ve developed a slew of techniques to ensure that my staff work is as complete as possible when I share it with my colleagues.

Several of these techniques relate to communicating changes in business metrics like revenue, user retention and system reliability.

Consider the case of quarterly revenue updates. You might start with something like “Revenue in Q3 hit $10M”. There’s nothing wrong with this sentence, but it’s not complete. Important questions demand an answer before I consider this update complete.

Describe the Direction of Change

First up, in what direction has the number changed? Is revenue up, or is it down? A better version of the update says, “Revenue in Q3 is up to $10M.”

Be careful with words like “up” and “down” when referring to metrics that aren’t universally understood: not everybody will know whether “up” is good or bad.

Consider a technical metric like page load speed. A sentence like “Page load speed is up to 1.2 seconds” will confuse readers who aren’t sure whether the page load speed going up is an improvement or not.

I prefer to be more precise in these situations: “page load speed deteriorated to 1.2 seconds” or “page load speed improved to 1.2 seconds.”

From What, To What

Once the reader knows the direction of change, the next likely question is: “What was the metric value before the change?” Don’t make the reader ask this; include that information in your update: “Revenue hit $10M in Q3, up from $9M in Q2.”

Your audience will often contextualise changes by the magnitude, absolute or relative. Save them time and do the sums upfront: “Revenue hit $10M in Q3, up 11.1% from $9M in Q2.”

Use absolute change ($1M) or percentage change (11.1%), depending on which makes the most sense for your audience.

Talk About Targets

Sometimes, metrics improve, but not enough. Other times, they degrade without meaningful impact to the business.

Where you can, it’s helpful to anchor your writing about business metrics to the targets for those metrics. For example: “Revenue hit $10M in Q3, up 11.1% from $9M in Q2, beating our target of $9.8M by $200K.”

Don’t be tempted to hide the fact if a target is missed. I’ve found that nothing erodes trust faster than when difficult situations are hidden from critical stakeholders.

If you miss a target, say why: “Revenue hit $9.5M in Q3, ..., missing our target of $9.8M by $300K. The Ever Given container ship blocked the Suez Canal, disrupting the supply chain and reducing available stock by 12%.”

Be Careful with Percentages

Metrics expressed as percentages are a regular source of confusion. If the churn rate drops from 10% to 9%, is that a 1% or 10% drop? It’s a 10% drop and a one percentage point drop.

Percentages and percentage points are often confused, even by those who should know better. In the 2024 UK Budget, Employers’ National Insurance increased 1.2 percentage points from 13.8% to 15% (an 8.7% change). Business & Accounting Daily had this to say:

In a tax raising Budget, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves increased employers’ national insurance by 1.2% to 15% from April 2025

My solution is to use percentage points to talk about change and to always show the before and after values. It’s the before and after values that remove the ambiguity.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves increased Employers’ National Insurance by 1.2 percentage points from 13.8% to 15%.

Summary

You don’t need to write paragraphs of text to pack your metrics updates full of juicy information.

Describe the direction of change, whether that direction is good or bad, what the metric was before the change and how the change relates to targets and you’ll answer your audience’s likely questions.

Put all this information in the first one or two sentences in a memo or in the title of a slide in an update deck. Save the paragaphs of text for supporting information; don’t make your readers go hunting for answers to common questions.

If you're writing to communicate within your organisation, save your readers—and yourself—some time by answering all obvious questions upfront.

I recently reviewed a memo written by a colleague updating the company about progress on our hiring goals. He wrote, “Last month, we hired a number of new engineers.”

This sentence doesn’t say much nor answer the questions the reader will likely ask. I see sentences like this all the time in internal communication, and it's such a shame because they miss the opportunity to save readers a lot of time by going into a bit more detail and answering the common questions.

The first question that comes to my mind is, “How many new engineers?! “ With a small change, we can answer the most pressing question: “Last month, we hired five new engineers.” This is a shorter sentence with more information.

Because we’re talking about hiring goals, there’s a target. We can use that target to tell the reader if five is a good number: “Last month, we hired five new engineers, beating our target of four.”

I'd be happy to read this last sentence in a memo, as the title for a slide in a presentation deck, or as a bullet point in an update message. But! I want more. I want the memo's next paragraph, the slide's body, or the sub-bullets to answer even more of my questions.

Who are these new hires? When do they join? What roles are they filling? Are these backfills or new hires? All of these are legitimate questions for the interested reader. Don't wait to be asked; answer them upfront.

Last month, we hired five new engineers, beating our target of four. Ada Wong (IC7) and Leon Kennedy (IC5) will join the T-virus team on November 30th. Chris Redfield (IC7), Jill Valentine (IC6), and Barry Burton (IC4) all join the G-virus team on December 7th.

This is much better. It contains all of the relevant information and answers the likely questions. Some questions may be unanswered (salary, previous experience, etc.). If so, you can refine your writing the next time you send a similar memo and answer those questions upfront, too.

For a slide in a presentation deck or more complex information, a bullet list is fine:

The more questions you answer in your initial document, slide, or message, the more you'll meet your readers' needs and the less time you'll spend answering those questions.

Whenever I write a memo for my boss, I make it a game with myself to get zero questions. I want the document to meet his needs as-is. I've not entirely managed zero questions yet, but each time I get a question, I learn something more to add to future documents.