Reporting

Reporting means taking in information and sharing it without adding your own perspective.

An example of this is writing a book report without including your own thoughts and perspective.

Insight

This involves thinking, reading, and understanding information, and putting it together with other pieces of information. You’re creating something new by adding your perspective and connecting the dots.

An example of this is one business owner who realized that sales began to decline in March of this year. She realized that this was probably when the US recession began. This led her to assess staffing, product levels, business hours, and service offerings

As another example, if an HR professional reports that “Five people resigned in the past month, and in their exit interviews, they said that they were going on to greater opportunities” vs further investigating why they left and what might have been done about it to give the executive team actionable insights.