Private Equity Experience

Why Private Equity LOVES the Flash Report (And You Should Too)

• Emily Sander • Season 1 • Episode 20

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In this episode, hosts Emily Sander, Ed Barton, and Rory Liebhart dive deep into one of the most powerful tools for leadership teams and private equity-backed companies: The Flash Report.

What You’ll Learn:

  • What a Flash Report is and why it’s a game-changer for leadership transparency and decision-making.
  • How to structure a Flash Report using frameworks like Balanced Scorecard, OKRs, or EOS.
  • Why Flash Reports improve communication with boards, investors, and internal teams.
  • Real-world examples of key metrics and narrative sections that make Flash Reports effective.
  • How to avoid common pitfalls—like overcomplication or inconsistent data—when implementing a Flash Report.
  • The role of a Chief of Staff in driving and maintaining a Flash Report process.

Key Topics Discussed:

  • Emily kicks off with a fun trivia round, leading into the core topic: the Flash Report. Ed provides a high-level definition and shares how the Flash Report helped align teams and improve communication with private equity partners.
  • The hosts discuss how Flash Reports foster transparency, save time in meetings, align teams with strategic goals, and help leaders make data-driven decisions quickly.
  • Ed explains how the Balanced Scorecard methodology informed their Flash Report structure, emphasizing the importance of connecting metrics to strategic initiatives.
  • Rory and Emily highlight how Flash Reports can be tailored to any industry—whether SaaS, lending, manufacturing, or services—by focusing on the metrics that truly drive the business.
  • The team shares a sanitized example Flash Report, breaking down each section:
  1. Quantitative Metrics: KPIs across four perspectives (Learning & Development, Internal Process, Customer, Financial).
  2. Qualitative Updates: Brief narratives from department leaders.
  3. Strategic Initiative Updates: Quick status reports on key projects.
  • The hosts wrap up with actionable advice:
  1. Start simple—don’t overcomplicate.
  2. Ensure data accuracy and consistency.
  3. Use the Flash Report to tell a story, not just recite numbers.
  4. Leverage the Chief of Staff or a cross-functional leader to maintain the process.

Links Mentioned:
Flash Report Template

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Who Are We?

Three insiders. One mic. All things private equity — explained. Hi 👋 We’re Ed, Rory, and Emily — a CEO, a CFO, and a Chief of Staff — here to demystify the world of private equity. Between us, we’ve sat in the founder’s chair, run PE‑backed companies, and worked on the deal side, so we know the wins, the pitfalls, and the jargon (and we’ll explain it).

Through the Private Equity Experience Podcast, our book On‑Ramp to Exit, and a library of free tools and templates, we share real‑world stories, practical strategies, and insider insights to help you navigate every stage of the PE journey — whether you’re leading a portfolio company, joining a deal team, considering PE, or just PE‑curious.

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emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

All right, to get us into our topic today. Quick trivia round for you, ed and Rory.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Here we go again.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Question one in the Justice League, which hero once Outran Superman in a race?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Oh my gosh.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

It's gotta be Flash Gordon. Flash the flash, the.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Question two,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

as

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

what's the portable storage device you carry on a key chain?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

That's a tough one.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Flash drive.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

drive. Last one. What is the momentary

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Wow.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

burst in a pan? Before a flambe,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

I'm, I'm going o for three on this. I guarantee a burst of.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

there's a saying. It was a.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Flash in the pan.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

There we go. Rory, you got the last one? Flash Japan. Yeah. Dark horse.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

clever than that.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Oh my gosh. Very good. Speaking of flashes, that's that's what we're here to talk about. The Flash report. The Flash report. We've all used this in our leadership teams at a place. We work together and I think we've each used it different companies since then. I certainly have spoken to so many chiefs of staff about the Flash report and they've implemented the flash report at their companies to great success. So super excited for this topic. Ed, can you kick us off with like quick, high level definition and maybe the backstory of how, how we picked it or how you picked it G two?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Hmm.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Sure. So the flash report is. Essentially compiling the key metrics, not more than six or seven key metrics that cover the performance of the business for a short period of time. So we did ours weekly.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

I

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Um, and then also a brief, and I, I had a narrative, brief narrative from each of the key. Business units of what was going on and what was critical. And the entire key to the flash report was I would receive it. So I asked for it from the team, I would receive it and could digest the critical elements before our weekly, our weekly staff meeting. Um, so I could see what needed to be covered and I could do it in 10, 10 minutes. And then after the staff meeting, we may make a tweak or two, and then we distribute it to our private equity partners, and then they could see in 10 minutes or 15 minutes what was going on with the business. And then when I had my Friday, so that was normally on Wednesday when I had my Friday call, we would be able to pin down off the same common set of data.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah,

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

kind of the key things that we need to be covering this week as far as business operations or performance.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah,

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Okay.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

used it as a leadership team in our leadership team meetings as kind of a starting point for our discussion and. team members were meant to read that beforehand. So it would be distributed, read it, scan it, get a gist of it, and then we weren't just like verbatim reading the flash report to each other. It was discussion points that needed to be discussed as a group or, Hey, I have a question for you on this. I saw this. Or Any handoffs. Or interdependencies and things like that. So as a participant. the leadership team meetings, I found it really useful to know, quick snapshot of what was happening around the business, and then have a more fulsome, robust discussion.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah, totally. I think, um, this is such a useful tool for many businesses, but I think the, the, the most use that you can get out of a tool like this is. For businesses where it's a, it's a culture of transparency. And I mean, you know, I, I sort of came up in my executive journey through Ed, a lot of what I, you know, kind of values I share today were from working for Ed, with Ed. you know, it's, it's, it is about transparency. You're trying to have all of the, you know, heads of the business, March in the same direction, which aligns to a strategic plan, right? And so you're measuring things based on that and. is a just real simple, effective, efficient way to have everybody get on the same page. And then you talk about not only internally, but with your external stakeholders, your board, your investors, whomever is really interested in kind of like the pulse of the business, what's going on there. It just saves a tremendous amount of time getting people up to speed in individual meetings every month. Uh, you know, when they haven't had continuity with information flow. And this is just a really way good way to. things down into concise, uh, metrics and commentary. Um, qualitative, quantitative, if you will. And yeah, I mean, it's, can't say enough about the usefulness of such a tool.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

And as Ed mentioned, this is not a full debrief. Let's spend half a day to go through every single metric. It's, it's a flash report

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

your

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

snapshot.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

So this is just kind of getting people a pulse on the business. And I mean, I've talked about this in a number of, of episodes and conversations where our PE group. Loved the Flash report.'cause Ed and us as a team introduced that to them. They loved it so much. they rolled that out to all of their portfolio companies. Like, everyone is doing a flash report, we want this from everybody. So that's how useful it was for them. And I think you, you two have both mentioned separately as CEO and CFO. The follow up questions you got from them were more. Not like better questions, but just more informed and closer to the pin so you could get right to the crux of the The issue.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

key. Yeah, exactly that. Yep.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

just you spend so much time at board meetings sometimes, or even in just all hands meetings, uh, or even leadership meetings like rehashing you left off like a month or a

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

which is just a waste of time. Honestly. We all have time is so precious. So the less time you spend on that, the more time you spend, you know, getting down on the issues that need to be discussed and decisions made. More importantly, you can do so with this sort of like, you know, uh, consistent, uh, you know, information set, if you will. So,

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah, and it.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

excellent.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Another benefit for me was it made me sit there for, you know, 10, 15 minutes go like, what did happen this week? Everything's flying around and it's like, oh my gosh, let me look at my last entry in the flash report. Oh my gosh, so much has happened since then. Let me make sure to document that in the anecdotal section and we'll show an example here in the second half of, of the pod. But, um, ed, you were kind of, this was off the balance scorecard. Which is the methodology we used, um, at G two, which is the place we work together, but people now are thrown, have OKRs and EOS and different types of, uh, metric gathering and reporting systems. Um, maybe just a quick backdrop on you selected Balance Scorecard and how that got us to the flash report.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

balance scorecard actually predates G two. So I actually implemented balanced scorecard when I became CEO of Bline, um, about five years prior to that. Uh, and did it because, just needed a framework to be able to analyze business, make decisions, and whether it's balanced scorecard or whether it's OKRs or whether it. You know, anything that you can get, as long as there's a system, a, a framework that allows you to organize thoughts and organize information and be able to make intelligent decisions, that's kind of critical to the operation of a business. And so, you know, it doesn't matter which one of those you choose, just choose one and then kind of focus on implementing that fully through the organization. The, the Flash report then became our weekly. You know, we pick the, one of the things with balance scorecard is you pick just a few key components that you're gonna measure that are really the drivers for your performance. And you, you do a lot of work ahead of time to analyze, you know, what are my, what are my kind of key elements that drive the internal, internal focus, which then drives customer focus, which then drives kind of the, the financial performance ultimately of the business. And so we would look at those various perspectives and come up with a couple key performance indicators at the department level, um, and then consolidate it for the company. And that's what we would report out. That would be kind of number one report out on the, on the, uh, flash report would be how are we doing with those particular initiatives around the, the, the balanced scorecard perspectives. And the second piece would be the ones that. Any business, doesn't matter who it is or what your business is, needs to understand on a weekly basis. So what's our cash position? What are our sales, what's the pipeline look like? So really revenue driven metrics. And then, you know, we had a, we, I was mostly, I've spent most of my career in, um, services, tech enabled services and technology, uh, financial services businesses. So we'd have key indicators around headcount.'cause that was our largest expense. And then if it was assets, you know, what the performance of those asset pools look like. And we'd just report that out. And within 10 minutes, I would've a, a good picture of where we were at on all of those eight or 10 key indicators of how the business was doing. And then a, a quick glance down at each of the initiatives around kind of strategic initiatives that we had, and then performance in each of the departments. It's, it's a, it's a game changer. Absolute game changer.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

And I think you mentioned some specific industries you were, you were in, but the Flash Report can, is industry agnostic. So it can be used for almost any industry and you would,

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Oh yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

obviously the metrics that are most meaningful for you and most relevant for you and your team to

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

at. Um, and I think another thing that you. Hit on there. Ed was backing up the, the Flash report and, and inherent in the balance scorecard methodology those four perspectives and they feed into one another. So the learning and development is where things started, that led to internal process, second perspective, which then led to the third perspective customer, which then ended with financial performance. And that was, I remember hearing that. Going, oh, that's different.'cause most people go spreadsheet numbers, jam it down into the business and make this number happen on a spreadsheet. And the way the, the, the methodology and approach behind what we were doing, which you were espousing, was No, no, no. We start with the learning and development. We start with our people. They take care of our customers happy Customers buy more things. And the natural end game, or byproduct or result is

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Mm-hmm.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

of the business.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yep. Yep.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Rory, you were in the CFO seat for for this. So what were you looking at in terms of putting together the.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

I was looking, you know, kind of, uh, longitudinally if you will. I, what I remember, you know, and I'm, it's funny, I, I, I'm working for a company now and we, we also use the flash report. Our CEOs uses that as primary tool, uh, to communicate with our board on a weekly basis. And, you know, we're an earlier stage business, so like the metrics we look at. quite a bit different than even like a private equity stage business. So, know, earlier stage businesses you're looking at, you know, certain things around growth, liquidity, you know, as you say, even people and kinda metrics around those things. Operational and, and in our case we're a lender, so, um, portfolio performance. Is everything. You know, you in a lending business, you know, it's one thing to be good at, you know, lending out money, you also gotta be able to collect it. So, we keep a very, you know, close eye on those things. But that's different than maybe if you're working for a SA SaaS business, you know? Um, so my point here is, you know, the, the framework of the flash report can be consistent across any business, but the specific. Metrics and elements that you go through could be very customized to a business. And I think, you know, we've worked with other companies to help them develop the right kind of flash report for them in our consulting businesses. But, um, know, as the CFO, like I've, I've often used it to look around at my peers, you know, whether it's the C-I-O-C-C-T-O, whatever, COO, and kind of what's going on in their organizations because I see things from the, the numbers framework. Um, but you know, looking at the activity and the things there helps me understand even the drivers to why the numbers are that they are. I'd like to think that most of the time I have a good read on that anyway. But things come up, you know, and as you said earlier, working for a fast-paced company, you're losing time. You know, being able to look at what the, what else is going on in the business, in other business units, super important. You can glean a lot from that and then kind of adjust course I, I as A-C-C-F-O. I use that to adjust my forecast, my financial forecast a

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Okay.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

know, if you're seeing a lot more throughput or if you're seeing a, a lot more, um, you know, call it asset acquisition or CapEx or whatever, you know, like that helps me what the future's gonna look like based on activities that are happening today.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

cool'cause I love the flash report as Chief of staff. So when we first used a G two, I was not chief of staff, but later on, um, we used the flash report when I was chief of Staff. And one of the things I liked about it is I would be having these individual conversations. Executives and they're like, why is this happening? Like, why isn't he doing this? Like, this just makes no sense to me. And then on the other side of things, you know, someone over here is going, why is she like, why does she just do this? That would make my life so much easier. What the heck is going on?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

having the flash report as a discussion for our, our weekly leadership meetings, which I took point on. It was, it was this discussion where like, oh, have context now I understand, might not agree with it, but I understand now. And it was also way to say, Hey, as a leadership team, and that was a phrase that Ed you and I used to kind of snap people out of, you're not, you're functional head anymore, you're part of the leadership team, you're a leadership team member, and you're on two teams, almost your functional team and leadership team. For the, for what's best for us as a group. Like where do we go from here? What's the best next step for the leadership team? So I really liked the Flash report'cause it just lent itself so well to having that type of discussion, which I think is key for having a really robust, lively, engaged, informed leadership team. So I love that aspect of it. From chief of staff.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

teams, even with the best intentions and the

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Mm-hmm.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

you know, well-rounded, uh, leaders to, to, to not be in silos. You, it, you can't, if you're running that kind of a program, as you said, like, you know, uh, everyone's in their lane trying to execute on their own metrics, but someone like you can look across the, across the business and have some way of. Um, helping solve a problem in technology or in operations or whatever it may be. Um, just by knowing what else is going on, what are people doing, you know, what are people not doing? More

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

you know, what and what's happening from the customer standpoint. Right. So, yeah, I just like it because it's basically a, you know, it's a, it's a foundation, it's a point, you know, that's consistent and it's metrics driven.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Ed, what kind of questions would you get from the board or PE group off the Flash report?

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Well, let me, let me take a, take a step back and actually add to what you just said, Emily.'cause I think it's really important the flash report. Is the methodology by which you ensure that the executive team is pulling the same direction as it pertains to a strategic plan. So the two you, you kind of have, you can put, I can put a flash report together for any business and go, well, you're gonna wanna measure cash and a couple of these other drivers. But the most effective flash reports are ones that are designed around the business's strategic plan. And that strategic plan, like I said, pick a framework, doesn't matter what it's.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

exactly.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

That that flash report becomes the. The cadence, the tempo, the communications of we're all pulling the same direction. Here's knowing that we're making progress.'cause you're seeing it quantitatively and qualitatively on a flash report. It answers a bunch of those questions like, well, why is X, Y, and Z doing what they're doing? Well because this is a strategic plan and everybody kind of knows what it is, and it provides a communications framework for everybody to go, okay, we've got a common common communications methodology in a flash report. I can see what's going on. I know we're pointing toward the. The strategic, you know, it's pointing toward the strategic objective, strategic goals. And I could see our progress or where there's not progress.'cause again, as you noted, the, the leadership team has, is responsible for strategic execution collectively. And then they're also, and then they've got their specialty areas. And that's a lot of the questions I would have from the private equity guys. Once at, at G two, we kind of had to train the private equity guys on. The, the balance scorecard and on the flash report, and again, as you noted, what kind of, once the, the light bulbs went off, this became the, yeah, we're doing this. Um, but with the, with the Flash report piece, it really did become one of those, you know, the private equity guys would go, okay, we've got, we understand based upon our quarterly board meetings, what your strategic initiatives are for this quarter. And so we're gonna, they would ask questions.'cause we, I would tell folks, don't, don't sugarcoat if we've got an issue, put issues in here. And a lot of them would be tech related, tech enabled. And they'd be like, do you need additional resources? Do we have the right folks? Do we need a contractor? Is, is this gonna delay a product launch? And the other thing that they would look at,'cause it's private equity and we're driving toward cash. You know, debt compliance for covenants and growth was what's in the pipeline and what's the probability of close. And so we'd spend a lot of time going, okay, are we, you know, we'd be getting our reporting out of this, the CRM, whether it was Salesforce or HubSpot or, or whatever the, those were the two that we've used. And we'd go, okay, what's kinda, what the pipeline look like? And we talk through, okay, the what is, what does the pipeline look like and how is that playing to the strategic plan? Sometimes we'd have people issues. Those would be in there as well. So it would tend to be strategy issues first would come out of, would be their questions.'cause it was structured around the strategy and we'd get buy-in on the strategy every quarter. And what we expected to accomplish that quarter. The second would be pipeline and sales. How are we growing and how are we going? And then the third would be any people issues that were identified in there, whether that was resource needs or whether that was people leaving or whether'cause we would report that and or whether that was, you know, I've got, I've got a, a performance issue in a particular area that might be reported out by one of the executives there. And again, our private equity folks were great partners. So they would, you know, ask key questions to make sure we were kind of making some of the right decisions, or I was making the right decision as the chief executive.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

I remember you going, no surprises, good or bad, no surprises. There should be no surprises for the board. At board meetings. There should be no surprises. Tell, tell me, you know, tell the group what's

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

good or bad, ugly. Just get it out there, which was and and relieving. I.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

CEO at my business that I work at, you know, he's, he's a, he's a great CEO and he's. He's a, he's taken a, you know, kind of a, a spin on the flash report and kind of boiled some things down to good, bad, ugly, right? Like every, every business has all of those things. You want things to be more, uh, good than anything, but you gotta deal with all of it. So, yeah, I think it's a good, it's a good way to communicate everything, that's salient. And you then end up spending the time going through more decision making, more thoughtful. Planning than kind of like spending your meeting time, like going through, what did you do last summer, quarter or week or whatever. It's, it's so much more of a stimulus for actually making shit happen, you know?

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah, well, I mean, again, as chief of staff, one thing I would try to facilitate but also look for is win the leadership team. When one member would say, we didn't meet our goal here. Here's why. I know why, and this is bad news and I'm sharing it with the group. And other people wouldn't, you know, beat this person over the head or they'd be like, okay, well how do we help you fix that? Or Here's an idea. Or like, here's also the reason why my team didn't hand this off to you properly. All that stuff. It, it was bad news, but I look for these little responses from people and that would tell me health of, of the leadership team. That was an aspect of leadership, team health, um,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

stuff that like is maybe not trending in the right direction. You see those shoots come up early rather than. If you work in silos and you don't have regular information flow, somebody's gonna try to bury that until they can't anymore, and then it becomes a real problem.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

And they can bury it. It's easy to bury it when you're not having discussions around this. So this gets it out in the open.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

yeah, yeah. I just, I just believe so much in the leadership culture of transparency, and this is just the right tool for that, you know?

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah. All right. Should we show folks? Let's do a little share screen. Let's do

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

yeah, yeah. Bust it out.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

a little show and tell.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

All right. So here's, we're gonna do like the blank template just to get people used to it. And then we have an example template we'll go through. Um.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

But, uh, this is just on a good old, good old spreadsheet. You can, I've seen zoom flash reports that are

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Oh gosh. Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

like, like, like a ship. They're in the shape of a ship and each of the sails is like a perspective. And I'm like, that is,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

But you can also,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

it's, it's, it's function over form. But there's some really, I mean a lot of people use like Power BI and other things

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

where you can really make it pretty sophisticated with sorts of other bells and whistles. But at the end

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

you know, good old Excel

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

So.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

what the whole economy's built on, basically.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

So there's, two main sections of the flash report. The top section captures the handful of KPIs for each perspective, and then there's the second part, which are kind of the, in your own words. Key executives, C-suite executives, leadership team, whatever that is for your company. Tell us what has happened in your respective department. In a few sentences, just in your own words, in a few bullet points, what happened? What's the most

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Mm-hmm.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

information, um, what do you guys want people to know about this top section? So for folks listening, we have, um, four different sections that correspond with a perspective. So learning and development, internal process, customer and finance. what's the general,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

I, I mean, just kind of what Ed said earlier, aligns ultimately to strategic plan, which then typically aligns to an operating plan for a period, whether that's the current year or maybe a three year plan or something like that. Um, and so then in this, in this format, you're gonna be pulling the key metrics that underpin those, and you're gonna measure them. And you're

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

yeah,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

quantify them up. In this top section, the top section is quantitative, basically.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

let me pull up the actual example here. So,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

go.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

um.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Exactly.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

This has a lot of financial metrics, but,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah,

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

but you can, you can see here's the plan. Like literally there's a column that's like, here's what we're trying to hit, here's the target. Um, one quick thing though, I think the flash report, putting that together, reporting out on it, having discussions, but almost separate from that and prior to that. We did have discussions on literally what is our mission statement, what's our vision for the company as a whole? And then for this next year,

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Oh yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

are we going to break it down by quarter? So everyone knew the big picture context, but I just wanna get that out there. For listeners who were like, wait a minute, are they building this flash report too. There were separate conversations in a series of, workshops that that went to that, alright, ed or Rory Walk? Walk. Walk us through.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Yeah, in this. I was gonna say, this particular Flash report is actually a sanitized version from one of the companies that I've been working with. So, you know, essentially you've got the elements that, that, uh, you had noted, Emily, where you've got, you know, again, financial tends to, tends to dominate. It's, it's, if you think about your strategic plan, financial is the ultimate outcome of your other perspectives. And so in one sense you are like, this should be, this isn't driving the train. It's actually where the train is going. And so the, the, this is really, how are you performing? So you do tend to see a lot. And, and, you know, candidly, the, the metrics around finance tend to be, um, tend to be easier to measure, easier to manage, uh, maybe not manage, but easier to measure and easier to see. Um, but that's ultimately what you're looking to do is, you know, how are we performing financially? The other three perspectives drive into each other to that financial performance in a balanced scorecard world. And so in each one of those, you know, this is almost, I would say this is as much as you would ever wanna put in a, in a flash report.'cause you have really here about 20 different metrics. And I like to try and reduce it down even further to maybe 10 or 12. Um, but you know, again, your key, your key drivers and you know, when you look at, when you look at these components, the customer, the internal, and then learning and development or people and tools is how I tended to use it. Resources, internal resources, um, you know, we would look at. You know, those elements and go, okay, are we, and you can see that it's longitudinal here. And, and you know, Rory and I like to use that word'cause it's long, uh, and it's got two and it's got attitude net, so it's longitudinal, which basically means you're looking at a period over period over period and trying to analyze a trend. So you're going, okay, is this kind of bouncing around where we expect it to? Is it trending up or trending down?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

are we going toward our plan or away from our plan? And so when I do a flash report, I would tend to have. A longitudinal analysis where I can go, okay, am I, am I going the right direction or not? And, you know, and if we're seeing significant changes, especially in these other, in these three perspectives that you've got up on the screen, that's gonna eventually be driving my financial performance and, you know, six days or 66 months. And I, and this piece here with these, um, three, with the three perspectives and these KPIs. Tend to be what your levers are to pull for your financial performance. And if they're not all tied together, then that is where you tend to have a problem.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Exactly.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

And, and just for folks listening, so for an example, within the learning and development perspective, we have three items here. Things like training completion. Eight sales academy participation and f and i certification completion. This, again, can be customized to your business, but those are the three items. And then we have, you know, February, um, we have January, February, and the actual,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

outcomes there. And then we have the projected year to date for all of 2025 or for whatever year you're in. So we're measuring the actuals against the,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I like, I mean, in this case it's, it's great because you get the, you get the both variants of your, you know, current performance against the plan. You have the trend relative to prior period, and then you have the forward looking view and how that, you know, shakes out based on, on those trends and how you perform. So you really can get kind of the full picture with, just as you see here, you know, about six or seven columns of information. You know, several metrics in, in the rows. I mean, it's really a powerful tool. Um, and then, you know, on the financial side, you know, I, I mean every business is different. A manufacturing business is gonna be much different than say, know, tech enabled services business. But you know, you're generally looking at kind of. Top line, uh, you know, sort of revenue sales metrics, that's what's gonna drive your business. You look at your and CapEx, so somewhere around those three things, you know, you should be able to see the whole story based on the rest of the business and how it's trending out. Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

And I remember at at G two stood this thing up from scratch and so a big portion of our discussion was goes on the balance scorecard, but also what goes on the Flash report. And that was a group discussion. It wasn't just, oh, you're the head of this department, therefore you come up with whatever you think is best. It was, again, us as a leadership team going, what do we really think best represents if we're headed in the right direction? For this perspective, what are some leading indicators? What are some lagging indicators? How do we best capture this? Again, in a snapshot, in a flash report? And we would have discussions and rounds of back and forth on, um, on this and anyone could, could participate and would, would be expected to participate.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

to. Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yes.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

maybe like what are you guys' thoughts on what should make it onto a flash report?'cause not everything can be on here.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah. Well a lot of that time you'll do, you'll have done the vetting of that. When you measure, when you kind of create your balanced scorecard, you know, metrics and, and or you know, call it, you know, the key things you're tracking for your business. This is just derivative of that. So a lot of times you'll have done that work already and you're just pulling into this particular report, which with a little slightly different view. But you know, I think one, one element that is. I, I believe to be true is you should always be evaluating whether the metrics you're are what matter, you know, and that may change over time. So, you know,

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

shouldn't be afraid to make changes. You know, especially if they're starting from scratch. You're gonna, you're gonna stumble around a little bit before you find your footing on your business if you've never done it before and your team's maybe not used to it. So, be open to. of amending things, but just really focus on truly understanding what drives your business, know?

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

the best practice is to do what you just said, Emily, which is, you know, you've got a balanced scorecard or some others, uh. And again, I, we've, we've used that'cause the three of us have been immersed in it. But basically any strategic framework and you've kind of worked through this thing and beat it up and beat it up and, and gone back and forth as a group and, you know, it got consensus on the drivers and are measuring that, that's a best method. The second best method is. What Rory just said, do something, measure something, you got an idea. And then if you, if it's, if it's wrong, adjust what you're measuring. But the worst thing is to do nothing'cause you're trying to figure out what, you know, I don't have a strategic thing and you know, and they telling me to do a strategic thing and it's gonna take nine months to do that. So best thing is. Have that second best thing is to have something and the worst thing is to, is to kinda spin around and, and, you know, overanalyze trying to get to something that's gonna give you a picture of how your business is performing on a regular basis. That's more frequently than my monthly close.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

well, well, what's funny is I remember, so I don't remember the specific, but one of my metrics or goals was. Determining what the proper metric should be. So that was like my very first one in one category. I forget exactly what it was, but it was Emily. come up with what metric is most accurate. So like dig into the data and figure out what actually is

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

most correlated with this thing we're trying to measure from your group. Another one, my initial one was to get a baseline. Set of data, and I was running client management at the time and we wanted a baseline set of data around, I think it, I forget what, but, it was like, okay, for this quarter my job was to show progress on creating a baseline of data. And that was, you know, are you 85% done? Are you 90% done? How close are you? Um, but that was, that was the first one for me. Um, Rory, do you remember any of your kind of thematic or specific ones you had on your flash report?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah, well for us, um, we were so focused on top line growth in that business, and so a lot of what, you know, our metrics were highlighting was bookings and kind of revenue, uh, cycle times to revenue from, from bookings, things like that, that. what drive, what drove our business, which was a very profitable business, was, you know, as, as much acceleration on top line as you can get. So, you know, in the few metrics we have, you know, it was much more geared around that. So I partnered a lot with the sales team, you know, um, on those types of things and had a CRM to, you know, pull information from. So a lot of businesses have that information at your fingertips, which is great. you know, and so, um. You know, I'd say that was kind of the bulk of it. Now, you know, again, in different business, my business today, similarly around growth, but it's also around sort of liquidity measures and sort of capital related things. Uh, you know, from an early stage business, you know, that's super important. You know, if you're totally funded and you're not worried, worried about sort of um, you know, you're gonna probably not use up a lot of real estate on this report with that kind of stuff, you know, so.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

again, depends on, on the focus. And if you're a growth stage private equity backed company, that's gonna, where you're gonna see a lot of the areas, you know, whether it's subscription revenue or recurring revenue or, you know, churn is a huge one too. We track churn very closely. you know, those are, you just have to know drives your business in particular, and then measure around that.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah, and, and one thing we did too is there were like separate meeting, there's, there's two series of meetings. One was for the flash report rollout where you'd actually go through the information on it and there was a separate. Meeting series. That was how, how is this process working? So do we need to change anything in the, in the flash report? Not like the. Information contained in the flash report, but the mechanics of like running the flash report itself, which I remember, um, two of our teammates were very confused about, they would always ask me, Emily, do I say this thing in this meeting or this, this, that thing in this meeting? And uh, but it was the actual standing up of the process and checking in on, you know, can you pull data easily and are we measuring the right things and all these different pieces. But that's another way to do it where you separate. The actual report out of the contents of the flash report and then how the structure and mechanics of the thing are working.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

absolutely. Yeah. It's like any other that requires maintenance, right? Is you gotta kind of, okay, you've, you've got something running, but is it, is it running the right way? Is it, you know, performing as you need it to perform? And I think, you know, uh, this is where I think like having a chief of staff or a resource like that, that is sort of like cross-functional, can like drive something like that, you know, big time.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

I mean, when I was chief of staff, ed and I, ed and I worked so closely, but

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

standing up the thing for the first time and figuring out. What's our source of data for this? Is it a manual pull to start? Can we automate that? Is it accurate? Ooh. And another big one is, is this data segment that we're reporting out over in this side of the Flash report, do those numbers match with this other subset of data that we're reporting out this part of the flash report? Because if they don't you, me, we will get questions on that.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yes. Garbage in, garbage out still is a thing on one of these. So you have to make sure that the data that you're working with is, you know,

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

and accurate and all that stuff, so,

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

And sometimes they are legitimately different, but you have to be able to explain why. And Rory, I'm gonna call you out in a good way here.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

okay.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

You were present for my very first board meeting. Um, I apologize again for how much I sweated in that meeting, but, um, you said, you said Emily because I was doing rounds and rounds of prep because I was over analyzing and over preparing and everything and freaking out

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

and, um.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

that's you, yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

One of the best things you've ever said to me is, Emily, don't just say the number on the screen, explain the story behind the number, explain like why that number is there, even if it's a bad number. I was like, okay. So I literally went through every single number and data point that I had on my slides and like wrote down a story behind them, which was fine for what I was doing at the time, the stage I was at. But I would encourage people. Maybe not to that level, but I would encourage people in that sentiment to know what's behind the numbers, and to be able to explain and not just recite in a, in a rote manner.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

had a, my own ComeUp, it's when I first started talking to the board and this type of thing, I mean, I was always knew the numbers, but it was, it was like the context behind the MA numbers is what matters. And I mean, that was probably my biggest learning curve myself and I was a numbers guy, is to be able to like synthesize that and, know, provide some novel insight from that that you know, is not obvious, you know. Yeah, I, I'd say I have that convers, I had that conversation with, um, my, a person on my staff yesterday is like, we go through a monthly business review on financial metrics. I'm like, CE already knows the numbers. You've shared the p and l and, and tell a story behind it, you know? So, yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

What.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

probably Ed taught me, and maybe I shared that with you and, you know, your cycle

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Circle of life sims.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Well I remember we were at a board meeting and it was like, it was like this one board member, we all know him, but he was like, I can read. And he said it like that. It was like, oh shit. Okay. Like he can read the slide. Stop just reciting the numbers. Um.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

well, I, I kind of got the sort of beat down proverbially from, you know, our actual private equity partner. You know, like he, he, you know, he's like, this guy needs to like, learn how to, you know, speak to a board basically. You know, he obviously knows the numbers, but he's, he's just, he, there's no difference between what he is doing here. As a financial analyst and A CFO, he needs to step it up. So, you

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

the kind of motivated thing I needed to hear. And you know, then I spent so much more of my time, as you just talked about for yourself, is like understanding the why behind it rather than just like, you know,

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

basically reciting the numbers and it's like, no shit. You already sent out the report. They already seen it. They

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

I can read. I always remember that. I can read,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

and what does it mean?

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

yes, yes. What does it mean? What am I doing about

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Yep.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

So Ed, we have this example on the screen here. So for people on, on YouTube, this is a sanitized version of one, of one of your companies you've been in involved with. Can you just walk people through maybe just some key elements of each of the perspectives here and kind of why you chose those ones and how they feed into each other.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

So let me caveat this by saying I can't read it'cause it's tiny.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

do you want me to

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

So I'm gonna have to put my glasses on.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Let me make this

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Um.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

And people watching. Can you see this any better?

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Oh, good. Yes, that's better. Okay, so, so we'll start with the, uh, people and tools section or learning and development section. Um, small, relatively small company. And so one of the key components, uh, and it's, and it's a relatively esoteric business, so one of the key components for us for success was to have people learn, not only learn the business, which is really where you've got the. Sales academy and the, and the training completion, um, and f and i completion, uh, certification completion. It was, it was really, can we get everybody trained? Can we get our key stakeholders externally trained, um, so that they better understand the business?'cause again, if they understand the business from a fundamentals perspective, that's gonna go a long way. Both product and business fundamentals. It's gonna go a long way to us being successful. Um, so that's why we chose those. Um, and then we kind of split it up based upon hiring plan, a number of, a number of folks we expected to be able to throughput on a given month as to what our targets were gonna be. Um, same thing if you look at the internal processes, uh, a lot of what we did was processing of various, various things, whether that was, you know, and, and Rory and I, you know, coming out of Bline, you have proof of claims. Um, where you were filing, uh, a proofs of claim for, um, for bankruptcies. Um, so you know, this, this happens to be a insurance, uh, administrator. So you've got, you know, when someone files a claim, you want to pay that claim timely. And so can we, are we hitting our timelines? Um, are we, um. Making sure that when we get a, when we get a contract or policy in that the contractor policy is activated fast in case there's a quick claim, um, we don't have it, you know, you're not in my system type of thing. Um, and then, you know, how much of that is automated versus how much of that is manual with a goal to really drive automation through the business? Not because you know, one for scalability, but two for accuracy. And, you know, the more what we found was the more people touch. Uh, process, um, the more likelihood you're gonna get variation in the process, and then inconsistency in performance. And so we wanted to automate as much as we could. And so that's really where the internal processes came from. Um, and within each one of those, there's a bunch of other things that, you know, there. Here's the why they're there kind of going to the discussion we just had. Um, but they're, they're also driving a bunch of other metrics that aren't shown here, but are just, that are critically important, especially when it comes to the customer, which gets us here, which is a net promoter score essentially, where, what do our customers think of us? And again, if you're in a business that's kind of customer facing and you're expected to have a high level of service, and we're that in particular in this type of business, if you've ever dealt with a health insurance company, you know what it's like when you've got a claims problem. If we can exceed. Expectations and do really well, we're gonna be able to grow that business. So we knew that, hey, this is gonna drive our financial performance because most people suck at this. And so if we could be really good at this as measured by net promoter score, which is a a concept that essentially says, you know, if you rate eight, nine, or 10, on a scale of one to 10, when you say, you know, would you recommend us to a friend?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Uh, or to, would you recommend our services if they rate you an eight, nine, or 10? That's a plus. And then kinda anything else is gonna be a minus. And you want to have, yeah, add your pluses and your minuses to get your net. Um, and so that's what we were looking at, you know, new, new dealer, new agent enrollments became the, you know, are we growing, um, from a, from the standpoint of growing the base of distri, the distribution base, and then the average time to close a ticket. So again, this is being tech enabled. Um, part of our, our customers were utilizing our technology to process at their locations, whether that's doctor's offices or what have you. Um, and so as a result, we wanted to make sure that if they submitted a ticket. Then they were having problems that we were able to get that resolved because if we couldn't, then they were gonna be unhappy. And if they're unhappy, it impacts their financial performance. Again, as, as Rory noted, this business was a, was kind of early stage red, uh, kind of a, a restart.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Um, so, you know, we said, okay, we've, we have to have a certain number of, of. Policies, um, sold or serviced on a regular basis. And so what does that break even count, which is, comes off of our budget, our plan, um, what's our average sales price, um, what's our net sales price? And there's a, there's a cost of goods factor that allows us to determine what our, um. Sales pricing or what our sales, uh, pacing is. So the sales pacing is how much we expect to sell that month. And we had a, this business has a subsidiary in Mexico, so we measured US versus Mexico. The pricing could be a little bit different as well. Um, we looked at that on the backside, but again, you don't want to have so many variables in here that it gets confusing. So we said, okay, what's the critical piece? How's the US doing? How's Mexico doing? Are we short or over our break? Even if we're behind our break even that means we're gonna have a, a net loss. So what's our net loss? Then we have ebitda, which is essentially takes out the non-cash pieces. So we say, okay, what's our ebitda? Then we go, what's our cash? For both. You know us and this has Europe in it. So what's our cash for US and Europe? Europe and US dollars? What's our long-term debt balance and line of credit balance? And then what's our burn rate? So on a monthly basis, what are we burning? And then kind of the bottom, how many months of runway do we have? And you know, and if we, and we had investments, we had an investment balance sitting out there. Um, or you could use line of credit, uh, max or you can, any of one of those things. But we basically said if we burn through our cash, how much runway do we have? Two and a half months. If we utilize our line of credit fully and pull in all of our, our investments, what's our runway? A year, A year, a month and a half. So, you know, we got a little over a year of runway to get this thing flipped, the cash flow positive where we're gonna need to do a capital call and this, and we would be able to look at this and go, okay. You know, what did we expect it to be at the end of the year and where are we at today and are we improving or not improving? And again, this is a growth business, so there's an anticipated burn rate. Um, that's, that's a feature, not a bug in this particular case. But we knew that we also were going to have to rely on additional investment from the private equity sponsor in order to be able to get ourselves, you know, this growth rate otherwise. You know, we would have to pull back and manage to that months of runway. So that's, that's what drove this particular, um, this particular set. But every business is gonna have, um, its own kind of unique. A lot of the stuff at the top is gonna be somewhat similar for almost any business. And that you're measuring cash and cash burn rate and EBITDA and those kind of things, and sales, sales, uh, trends. But the stuff at the bottom is really what's driving these numbers. And that's what we would look to manage on a regular basis. So whether that was, you know, performance, et cetera. And then, um, Emily's just, uh, kind of moved it for those folks who can't, who can't see this, have moved, has moved the flash report down to initiative updates. So we had. Three initiatives, uh, a tech roadmap, um, where we were having certain, uh, technology developed internally and, and deployed, um, the financial performance and then, uh, m and a and strategic partnerships. And these are like two, no more than two or three sentences of here's where we're at, you know, and I'll give the example on the tech roadmap platform upgrade V two in, in, uh, qa. It's expected to deploy in Q3. So that's, it's just, you know, quick hits so that whoever's looking at this can, can kind of go, okay, we've got a problem. There's a AI chat bot implementation. It's got, it was delayed'cause there were hall hallucinations on it. So it's been pushed out two weeks to try and improve the model associated with the AI chat bot. So that's, that's, and so that's where, as Rory had noted, you know, it could be good, bad, or ugly. This is an ugly'cause we're trying to automate all this stuff and it's, or it's bad and, you know, we, we roll something and it's, you know, the thing starts telling you to, you know, mail in your toothbrush along with your dental, along with your, uh, you know, dental impressions to get your, to get your dentist bill paid. Not a good, you know, not a, not a good answer from the chat bot, so you have to pull it down and fix it. Um, but. And that was supposed to go live and there's an expectation of savings, uh, or at least facilitating growth that you know isn't gonna be realized. It's a relatively short issue. And that's, you know, that's what we would do. And then the next section would be kind of key department updates. Um, and you know, it's got sales and customer service and marketing and, you know, production operations, um, overseas. So each of the, the C level or VP level folks would put something in here. Um, and so like our marketing, our marketing vice president for instance, had, you know, planning underway for apac, Asia Pacific. Um. So the APAC summit and then expecting 5,200 attendees, um, websites being, uh, re-scope for the, for the, the company. Three competing firms are looking at doing that work. That's it done. It's a, it's relatively short, snappy. Here's what's going on. Um, and then we may get a question from our private equity sponsor that would say, look, if you're expecting 5,200 attendees, you know, should we attend? Are there gonna be folks that are in your client base that maybe we should be talking to, or, you know, the website is being scoped and you got three competing and you got three competing firms looking at it, what are you getting as early indications as it cost? Is it, you know,$10,000,$150,000?'cause that's going to impact some of the, you know, some of the projections that they may have for a capital call based upon the burn rate above. So that would be the type of questions we would deal with and they would, but again, you can get through this entire flash report and pull out the key pieces for questions, decision making or issues to discuss at the staff meeting in 15 minutes.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

That was really helpful. I think our listeners will find that really beneficial. And if you are, if you are listening to this, I would encourage you to check out the YouTube version where there's a video. Also, the show notes will have links to the template and the example that we just went through. But Ed was talking through as I was scrolling through the key sections of the flash report. So you gotta, you got a preview or a sneak peek. Of how those are put together. Um, what else is important for people to know about the Flash report?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

I just think it's, uh, you know, uh, great leadership teams should implement something like this, you

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Um, like I said earlier, you gotta crawl before you walk. It's not gonna, it's not gonna start out perfect. You're gonna have to get people to buy in, um, in terms of, especially if they, they're not used to doing this kind of reporting or having these types of discussions on a regular basis, but. Gotta get over that growing pain and, and make it happen'cause it's so useful, saves so much time is such an easy way to communicate clearly, um, both upwards to your board and your ownership, but also sideways, um, to your colleagues. Um, you know, it's how you solve business problems is with information.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

that, I would say this replaced all of our other reporting. So people kind of did their siloed reporting or maybe they handed off one piece of data to another team. But this became the source of truth and everyone knew, everyone in our company knew what the Flash report was. Even mid-management rank and file folks up to our senior board members. Everyone knew what the Flash report was and how it worked, and I think that was. A positive and one of the benefits of everyone kind of knows what this thing is and they know they're part in it as well.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Exactly.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

Yeah, I would say that the last thing, which is. I don't wanna say it's counter to what Rory just said. It actually reinforces it is don't make the flash report so difficult to compile so complex or overthink it to the point where you have to hire an FTE to do the flash report.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

No.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

The flash report should actually be, you know, again, the bulk of the numbers piece I've, I tended to assign to either the chief of staff or to the. Um, chief financial officers team or the accounting team to pull in, but it should be coming off of reporting that's already in the can, so it shouldn't take you a day to put together a flash report. The flash report should take an hour or two to put together, and the individual VPs or managers that are putting their components in shouldn't take more than 10 minutes or 15 minutes to, you know, like you said, Emily, it, it's a forcing function to go, what has, what have we done this week? What issues are there that we need to put, you know, kind of put on the table. Then just write that down and don't overthink it and get it out. Um, I, I have seen some organizations where we introduced a flash report or where I've introduced the concept of a flash report, and pretty soon they've turned it into like a monthly reporting package on a weekly basis instead, and it's just over complicated. It turns into a rub Goldberg machine, and you just can't

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2025_151352:

do that. It's gotta be simple, easy, easy to put together, quick to put together, quick to read, quick to digest, and quick to action.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

And I think this is for chiefs of staff listening. This is Bread and Butter Chief of Staff Initiative, and this was an ongoing initiative that I was on point for. So there's the initial standup and introduction of the Flash report to the leadership team, and then there's the. A second phase where you actually, how do you pull the data, what deciding what's gonna go in it, and then the ongoing, you know, cadence of the flash report outs, and, and sometimes if a leader is brand new to it, they've never done it before, it'll take months to get them in a regular ca cadence where they feel comfortable.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

True.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

The other story I wanna throw in here is I was going back and forth with. Um, a board member on the second part of the flash report, which is the little sentences in people's own words, and I'm like, Hey, like, what are you trying to hear? Is there a format you want? And the person I was talking to was Emily. I like it when it's in their own words. I don't mind that it's in different formats and people have bullet points, or this person has choppy sentences, or this person does it this way. I can, I know these people. I can actually hear them saying it, and I like hearing it in their own words, and I always remembered that. So I just wanted to. that out for for folks as well.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah,

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

um, awesome. I think we've covered a lot.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

pod yet. I think

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

I think it's worth it though. Flash Report is game changer.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

changer.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

stuff. Yeah. Good.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

listen to this again. Go watch it on YouTube and then in the show notes we will have the link to that blank template that you can use if you want, and customize it yourself. And then also the example we just went through to have side by side as well, but.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

out to any one of us individually, I think, uh, probably

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

in touch with us. to, happy to shed more light on it. So

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151353:

Awesome. Thanks Rory. Thanks, ed.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351:

next time, team. Bye-Bye.