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most client reports answer the question "what happened?"

the better question is "what does this mean for what we do next week?"

here is what a useful weekly update contains:

the number that changed

one metric, the one that moved most significantly week over week. not a list of everything. the one thing worth discussing.

why it changed

your best explanation. even if you're not 100% certain. a hypothesis is more useful than silence. clients can push back on a hypothesis. they cannot push back on a shrug.

what you're doing about it

one or two actions. specific. with a timeline. "we're monitoring it" is not an action.

what to watch next week

the leading indicator you're tracking to know if the action worked.

that's the whole report. four things. fits in a paragraph.

the reason most reports are long: they're covering for uncertainty with volume. if you don't know why something happened, it's tempting to list everything instead.

clients don't want everything. they want confidence that someone is paying attention and knows what to do.

/weekly-client-update in the pack pulls the performance data and formats this structure automatically: https://paidmedialab.com/pack

saku