In short: Two people read a GEO report and they are deciding different things. One is deciding whether to keep funding the work. The other is deciding what to do on Monday.
One document written for both serves neither, and the usual compromise is a deck that answers the funding question too vaguely to act on and buries the working detail in an appendix nobody opens.
Write two. The funder's version is one page and ends with a decision. The team's version is the sheet and the source list. Both carry the same method, unchanged, or neither is comparable to the last one.
Two Questions, Not One
Before deciding what goes in a report, decide which question it closes.
The person who approved the budget is asking whether this is working and whether it should continue. They are not interested in which platform named you on which day. They need enough to make one decision and the honesty to trust the next report.
The person doing the work is asking what to change. They need the detail: which questions moved, which sites keep appearing in the answers, which of the four steps is failing for which page. A summary is useless to them because the summary is the part they already know.
The compromise that fails both: a twenty-slide deck with a chart at the front and the sheet pasted at the back. The funder reads the chart, which has no floor attached to it and therefore says nothing defensible. The team never reads the deck at all, because the thing they needed was the sheet and they already have it.
The Funder's Version
One page. Four things, in this order, and the order is the point.
The decision, first. Continue, stop, or change the scope. A report that does not ask for a decision is a status update, and status updates are how budgets get cut quietly rather than argued about.
One comparison, with its floor. Not a chart of everything measured. One number against the same number last quarter, with the noise floor stated beside it so the reader can see whether the movement clears it. A movement inside the floor is reported as no change, because that is what it is.
What was shipped, with dates. The work you controlled and when it landed. This is the only column in the whole report that is entirely yours, and it is the one that makes a flat quarter legible rather than embarrassing.
What would change your mind. State in advance what result would make you recommend stopping. A person who says this is far more credible than one who reports a win every quarter, and it converts the next report from a defence into a check.
The Team's Version
Not a document. The sheet, plus two things read out of it.
The first is the source list: every site named across the answers, counted. That list is the off-site work queue, and it is more useful than anything a keyword tool will give you because it is where this category is actually being read from.
The second is a per-question note on which step is failing. A question where you are never named at all is a different problem from one where you are named and placed below a weaker competitor, and the fix comes from a different module. Sequencing the Work is the order that decides which of them to spend the quarter on.
Send the sheet, not a picture of it. A screenshot of a spreadsheet in a slide is a spreadsheet nobody can sort, filter or check. If the team cannot open the file and look at the rows behind a number, they will rebuild their own record, and then there are two.
The One Thing Both Versions Carry
The method, stated identically, and unchanged from last time.
Six lines is enough: the questions, the platforms, the runs per question, the session rule, who ran it, and the date. Put it at the bottom of the funder's page and on a tab of the sheet.
It is there for the moment somebody asks why a number moved. A trend measured one way in March and another way in June is not a trend, and the only thing that catches that is a method somebody can compare against the last one.
Who Presents It
The person who ran the measurement, where that is possible.
Not for credit. The first question in the room is almost always a method question, and the answer to a method question is either immediate or it is an action item that delays the decision by a fortnight. Somebody presenting a measurement they did not run cannot answer it.
Key Takeaways
- Two readers, two documents. The funder is deciding whether to continue; the team is deciding what to do next.
- The funder's version is one page: the decision asked for, one comparison against the floor, what shipped with dates, and what would change your mind.
- The team's version is the sheet itself, plus the source list and a per-question note on which step is failing.
- Stating in advance what result would make you stop is what makes the rest of the report credible.
- Both versions carry the same six-line method, unchanged, or the comparison with last quarter is not one.
Check yourself
Before you move on
Not scored, not recorded, and not part of the certificate. Both answers are settled by a sentence in this lesson, and the reasoning appears whichever option you pick.
- 01
A quarterly report goes to the budget holder and to the team doing the work as one document. What usually goes wrong?
- 02
What belongs in the funder's one page that a status update usually leaves out?