A signal report is not a catch-all. It is a selection, and every selection is a decision. Someone determines what the board table gets to see and what is left with a team manager or in an inbox. That decision is rarely made explicitly. Usually it arises from habit: what was reported last time gets reported again this time, and what was left out stays out now too.
"What belongs in it" is actually two questions. The first is substantive: what type of signal is relevant enough to warrant board-level attention. The second is procedural: who has the mandate to determine that. Organisations usually devote all their attention to the first question and skip the second. The result is that the composition of a signal report depends on whoever happened to draw it up, not on an agreement that applies to everyone.
That becomes visible as soon as there is a change of personnel. A new communications manager reports differently than the previous one. An interim director wants to see different things than the permanent board member. Without a fixed answer to the question of who decides, the content of the report changes with every staff change, and with it what the board does and does not get to see.
A signal report typically contains a mix of three things: what was said, what was promised, and what happened. That seems straightforward, but the three categories often blur together. A commitment gets recorded as progress. A stakeholder's statement is read as a fact about reality, while it is a quote that is already selective for that very reason.
Which signals actually belong on the agenda is a question that cannot be separated from urgency: not every signal carries equal weight, and which signals belong at the board table is connected to the question of when something is urgent enough to be reported outside the fixed cycle. A report that treats everything equally loses the distinction between noise and a signal that deserves attention before it escalates. Who makes that distinction, and at what moment, is exactly what when is a signal urgent and who decides that is about.
It is often assumed that the content of a report is established first and the rhythm in which it appears comes second. In practice it works the other way around. A quarterly rhythm forces summarising, causing detail to fall away. A monthly rhythm leaves more room for nuance, but risks giving small signals the same weight as large ones. So the rhythm partly determines what fits into the content, not just how often that content is shared.
The question of how often reporting should happen depends on the nature of the stakeholder relationship, the type of organisation and the speed at which things can change. There is no fixed answer that works for every board table, as how often do you report on stakeholders also shows: it is a judgement call, not a standard.
A signal report does not exist in isolation. It only gains meaning once it has a fixed place on the agenda, with a fixed owner responsible for the question of what goes in and what does not. Without that agenda slot, reporting becomes incidental: it happens when someone finds time for it, or when an external event forces it. How that fixed slot is organised, and who decides on that, is a question that goes beyond the report itself; how does stakeholder work get a fixed place on the agenda and who decides that addresses that underlying structure.
The content of a signal report also differs by sector, simply because the stakeholders differ. Who needs to be heard in construction differs from who is relevant in the installation sector, and that difference carries through into what a signal report should contain. For those who want to work this out for their own sector, who you should talk to in construction offers a starting point, as does who you should talk to in the installation sector for that sector.
A report compiled without fixed criteria remains dependent on the person who makes it. That is not a problem as long as that person stays on and is consistent. It becomes a problem as soon as there is a change of personnel, as soon as the organisation grows, or as soon as a stakeholder makes a statement that does not fit the usual format. Then it turns out that no answer was ever formulated to the question of who decides what counts as a signal, and who decides when it carries enough weight to reach the board table.
That is precisely the area the Trust Baseline focuses on: not on what stakeholders think, because we do not know that until they say so themselves, but on the difference between what management believes it knows and what is being reported internally and externally. A commitment that is not honoured weighs more heavily in this than an investment that fails to materialise, and that difference is one of the reasons that a signal rhythm is more than a matter of frequency.
The tool that supports this is under construction. Those who want to get started with this already can sign up for the waiting list.
A signal report tells you something about what is coming in and who knows about it, but says nothing about who actually processes it and with what capacity. That is a different question, with a different tool. At FTE TO AI, you can use the work scan to calculate, per task, what portion of the work can be taken over by AI, so that insight into signals can also be translated into insight into the staffing needed to process them.
Vraag maar. Het interessantste antwoord komt meestal van wie u nog niet heeft gesproken.
Answers come from this site’s knowledge base. Not tailored advice, and not a scan of your company.