Kit 06: board and reporting
Services Board Pack and Operating Rhythm Kit
A five-chapter monthly board pack, a one-page scorecard, and a meeting rhythm that carries the same numbers from the weekly operating meeting to the board.
This kit is the monthly board pack for a services firm, and the meeting rhythm that runs from it. It is for the CEO or finance director who reports to an investor board, a chair or their own leadership team, and who writes a pack that grows a page every quarter while the management meetings run on different numbers.
The pack has five chapters in a fixed order, so a reader always knows where to look. Each measure sits in a primary or a secondary box: the few numbers that decide the month up front, the ones worth watching behind them. A one-page scorecard puts customers first, then teams, then the business, because the first two are what produce the third, with a SOFT review beneath it. This version reads the letters as successes, opportunities, failures and threats. The format is borrowed and credited in the kit, and it makes failures something you name rather than something you soften into weaknesses.
Services firms need two things a generic pack leaves out. Customer health is rated red, amber or green and split between project and managed clients, because the two go wrong in different ways and at different speeds. And a management information pack sits underneath the board pack, carrying the detail so the board pack does not have to.
Then the rhythm: a meeting system from the weekly operating meeting to the all-hands, each meeting fed by the one before, so the same numbers travel from the delivery team to the board without being retold on the way. An appendix covers setting up a first board, for a firm that has just taken investment or appointed a chair.
It is written from how I ran DevOpsGroup, from my notes and my recollection, and every figure in the templates is invented.
What you will get
Who it is for
Questions
- What should a board pack for a services business include?
- Five chapters in a fixed order, a small number of primary measures that decide the month and secondary ones behind them, a one-page scorecard, customer health split between project and managed clients, and the threats with an owner beside each. The detail goes in a management information pack underneath, so the board pack stays short.
- What is a SOFT review?
- A review of the period under four headings, read in this kit as successes, opportunities, failures and threats. It reports on what happened rather than auditing a position, which makes failures something the meeting names. The format is borrowed, and credited in the kit.
- Does it work without an investor board?
- Yes. The same pack and scorecard run a leadership team's monthly meeting, and the meeting system runs from the weekly operating meeting to the all-hands whether or not there is a board above it. The appendix on a first board is there for when there is.