Structuring and Presenting the WAC Report

There are many equally effective ways in which a decision report can be structured and
presented. You may have a favourite structure that has worked well. We, however, insist on
the following structure because the WAC report is an instructional exercise and we would like
you to systematically go through all the processes involved in rational decision making.

1. Situation Analysis
2. The Problem Statement
3. The Options
4. Criteria for Evaluation
5. Evaluation of Options
6. The Recommendation
7. Action Plan
8. Contingency Plan
9. Exhibits (if any)

Your report should also have a cover page, a letter of transmittal, an executive summary, and
a contents page, in that order. These preliminary pages are not listed on the contents page. You
will find below a brief description of each of these.

The Preliminary Pages

Cover Page

The cover page ought to contain:

• Title of the Report (Title of the Case)
• Title of the Course (Written Analysis and Communication)
• Names of your Instructor
• Your Name / Names, Section, and Date of Submission

Letter of Transmittal (LoT)

This is a cover note addressed to the reader of the report (as specified in the assignment). It
gives an overview of the contents of the report and the key recommendation. If the report is for
an internal reader (such as the author’s superior), it will be written in the memo format.
Otherwise, the letter format is followed.

Executive Summary (ES)

The executive summary is a miniature report. It contains the first six out of the nine parts of a
report, mentioned above. The ES should not exceed ten per cent of the full report. (Indicate,
at the end of the ES, the number of words you have used.)

Content Page

As the reports you write for WAC are very short, there would really be no need for a separate
contents page. However, we suggest that you put in a contents page so that you get into the

Page 1
habit of providing one when you write longer reports. Obviously, page numbering in the main
report is necessary to make the contents page meaningful.

The Report

Situation Analysis (SA)

This is possibly the most important part of your report because the rest of the report is built on
it. It shows your reading or analysis of the situation. It is neither a description of the situation
nor a summary of case facts. This is where you zero in on the facts that you consider relevant
for decision making and indicate the relationships that you perceive between those facts. In
more specific terms, the relationships that you are trying to discern are of the cause-effect type.
What factor or combination of factors, under what circumstances, could have possibly led to
an observed phenomenon? For example, production of widgets per hour has fallen—your data
shows that. Is it because of some constraint affecting the machinery or is it because of lowered
morale among the staff? Or, is there some other cause? If you analyse the situation well, you
will have no difficulty defining the problem or the managerial challenge faced by the
protagonist in the case. At the time of structuring your situation analysis, please remember that
merely stating facts is not sufficient. You need to draw inferences from the same.

The Problem Statement (PS)

Here you articulate briefly and precisely the problem faced by the protagonist for which a
course of action has to be developed. You will be familiar with the common-sense
understanding of the word problem: something that is harmful or undesirable and needs to be
‘solved.’ In the rational decision making framework, the term ‘problem’ is understood in a
broader sense—as a gap between what is desired and what exists, or between what would be
expected in the normal course of events and what has been achieved. You will notice that the
current state is being compared with a desired state. In other words, the desired state implies
an objective, a state that may be explicitly articulated in a business situation or may have to be
derived from the situation analysis. This focus on objectives is the first aspect of the rationality
that underpins the rational decision making framework. Identify your problem sharply and
correctly, and you will be addressing the cause of the deviation or gap that constitutes the
problem. You would have already worked out cause-effect relationships in your situation
analysis. Make your problem statement brief and crisp. We will also discuss the structuring of
more complex problems, so that such problems may be broken down into their component
parts, each of which may have multiple answer options or alternative courses of action.

The Options

In WAC, we focus on problems that can be countered by multiple options, thereby forcing you
to choose the best course of action. The options or alternatives available to the decision-maker
can be many, but credible options, those that have a reasonable chance of being adopted, may
be fewer in number. They may become obvious to you while you do your situation analysis or
you may have to use your creativity to generate them! Note two important points about
alternatives. First, the fact that you have to make a choice, say choose between two competing
alternatives, means that the alternatives are mutually exclusive. For instance, if I want to sell
the 1000 bags of wheat in my warehouse, do I do it now or three months later when prices are
likely to be slightly higher but stock-holding costs are also to be incurred? Or, if I need to buy
a second television set to address the conflict provoked by competing demands for television

Page 2
viewing slots within my family, and three brands are available in the market, I have to choose
only one. You may have come across the phrases ‘decision dilemma’ or ‘decision problem.’
What these phrases tell you is that you have to choose one course of action from among a
number of alternatives, each of which may have a set of positives and negatives. Second, to
make a choice, you need certain criteria or yardsticks. The use of criteria to evaluate options
constitutes the second aspect of the rationality underpinning the rational decision making
framework.

Criteria for Evaluation

Faced with different options, how do we identify the best? By developing criteria and
evaluating each option against the generated criteria. Criteria are the norms that an option
should meet for it to be adopted as the solution. In the television purchase example, the norms
could be price, quality, brand, after-sales service. These criteria are not universal; they stem
from the analysis of a given situation. Price, for example, may not be a consideration in some
families while it may be the most important criterion in others.

Identifying the best option is relatively simple if there is just one criterion. If there are multiple
criteria, you should prioritize them; in other words, you should indicate which criterion is the
most important and which criteria are less important. If an option fails the most important
criterion, it cannot be adopted even if it meets all the other criteria. Try and restrict the number
of criteria to three or four. Too many criteria rob the writer of the space to argue cogently on
an issue. The framing and prioritization of criteria stems from the analysis of the situation. You
may need to justify your prioritization unless it is obvious.

Evaluation of Options

Once you have prioritized the criteria, apply them to ALL the options identified. It is not
enough to apply these to just one of the most promising options if you want your evaluation to
appear sound and objective.

The Recommendation

Now you are ready to make your recommendation. It is the option that has met all the identified
criteria. If none of the options meet the requirements of all the criteria, the option that meets
most of the criteria, especially the most important one(s), is the one that you recommend to the
decision-maker. If the options do not meet the criteria, you may want to go back to the analysis
of the situation, generate more options, and repeat the process and then write your report. Good
planning should address this issue.
Action Plan

A decision which is not backed by an action plan is incomplete. Once you recommend what to
do, follow it up with how to implement it through drawing up a list of actions. This helps you
think through the consequences of your recommendation and at times forces you to revise it.
A well laid-out action plan helps the reader take your recommendation seriously and adopt it
without hesitation.

Contingency Plan

Page 3
With the action plan, your report is complete. We, however, ask you to go an extra mile.
Anticipate things that may go wrong when the recommendation is put into action. One
contingency in the television set purchase example might be a temporary shortage of the chosen
size and brand if the situation analysis had hinted at some production or distribution problems.
You need to suggest what to do in such a contingency. That is your contingency plan. Your
contingency plan should NOT be an adoption of one of the rejected options.

A good contingency plan enhances your report. You shouldn’t, however, look for outlandish
contingencies just to fill in a slot in the report. While you are advised to put on your thinking
hat and suggest a contingency plan, it is not a mandate!

Page 4