Life is pretty easy in the First World. Good food, restaurants, lots of staff, public transport, good governance, rock concerts, high standard of living and all those things. In these environments reside pampered investor relations practitioners, ones that come up with nice, fluffy IR tips. Tips full of cliches. In Africa, however there are real men, dealing with real issues, fighting a fight that pampered IR consultants have forgotten long ago.

What’s the difference between between the two? I outline some soft annual report tips first, then the tips from real men, recommendations containing the stuff that counts in Africa.

Cliche 1: “Use one voice” – collaborate an effective report including contributions from a wide range of operating and reporting focuses. Ensure you pull together a document that speaks in one voice including all management and the information it reports. Deliver consistent messaging.

Cliche 2: “Shorten it” – Repetition isn’t needed. Give investors more of what is important, such as strategy, cash flow, acquisitions, and debt and market conditions.

Cliche 3: “Highlight the real and relevant” – Reflect the culture of your organisation, its purpose and values. Set a tone showing the true nature of your company such as straight to the point or quirky. Engage your audience with what you are thinking providing relevant information which allows for clear assessment of business performance and various segments.

Cliche 4: “Connect the facts” – Show your audience the big picture, put performance in context. Include your company’s goals and how you plan to achieve them. Your business model is important. Try Integrate genuine, meaningful reporting on important information to stakeholders and society. Mean what you say.

Cliche 5: “Use backbone” – Half or more of annual report content is non-financial information and narrative. Therefore provide a backbone by structuring it around four narrative elements: market overview, strategy, value drivers and performance.

Cliche 6: “Be creative and take risks”- dare to walk the narrow line between consistency and change. You can improvise or adapt narrative techniques or elements used by others so long as they fit your messaging platform whilst providing meaningful content.

Cliche 7: “A credible and memorable story is the goal”. You simply can’t afford to give a weak, confusing and complex message. You need a compelling story linking business strategy and key performance drivers.

Cliche 8: Build investor confidence with credibility.

Now then to the African situation, deep and darkest Africa. Here you get rugged, thick skinned practitioners that are tough and weather beaten. The sort that have to sleep next to the printing machine that prints the annual report to get the job done. The sorts of annual report preparation tips these African Annual Report cowboys come up with are as follows:-

Rugged African annual report tip 1. The final changes from the client are NEVER the final changes. So don’t get upset.

Rugged African annual report tip 2 The simplest of pieces of information required are sometimes the most difficult to get hold of. Like the ages of directors, logos of the audit company.

Rugged African annual report tip 3 Use a professional photographer throughout the year to accumulate a good portfolio of pictures – these may be used for your website, marketing material and annual report. Obtaining a professional portfolio of a few hundred pictures can take less than a day. But good photographers are like honest politicians in Africa: they are either hiding or dead.

Rugged African annual report tip 4 The most important part of any annual report is the profile of the director that’s reading it. If a director says they have “vast” experience in whatever they do. Don’t accept it. Only God’s influence is vast. Directors’ experience cannot be.

Rugged African annual report tip 5 What may seem to be acceptable pictures of corporate events for your annual report etc. will not be. Bad quality rules. Plus people die, get fired for stealing or may want compensation for appearing in your annual report. Consider each picture carefully before it is published in your annual report . Is what you are looking at broken or stolen, is the employee still employed ? What is in the background of the picture, a fence, a dead dog? Budget time for photo-shopping out all the little things that would be deemed to be inappropriate in investment circles.

Rugged African annual report tip 6 Without a high level person signing the annual content off, errors and delays will creep into (or remain) the system. The person doing the final review needs to be involved in the annual report preparation on a day-to-day basis. If these high level client employees treasure their weekends, or have a family or a hobby, forget them. Hand it to the FD or accountant, they are used to hard work and long hours. People from the marketing department are used to long sleep in on Sundays after the “long” promotion event the day before.

Rugged African annual report tip 7 There is a tendency to use the Word document as a reference point for changes up to a certain point. Then the document is converted into the typeset document that will ultimately be printed by the printing company. The changes are marked up on the typeset copy and the “track changes” feature is not possible. This creates a whole new dynamic on tracking changes to the annual report text. If you have involved a director or member of senior management outside of the country, emailing a 25 meg annual report tool and fro can be a mission – especially on dial up. Use sendspace.com or a similar online tool for the transfer of large files. This needs a decent internet link – good luck finding one south of the Sahara.

Rugged African annual report tip 8 Get a typesetter that is prepared to live with you without complaining about hours or the number of changes or rounds of changes to the annual report. If the wife complains, get a new wife.

Rugged African annual report tip 9 Don’t assume that just because your typesetter is good there will be no errors. The word document that you hand over is converted into text and then reformatted from scratch. This is an intense and time consuming process and errors creep in. Trust no-one. I have yet to meet a designer that understands widows and orphans on a document.

Rugged African annual report tip 10 DO NOT EVER check the content of your typeset annual report to the original document just by reviewing it. Get two staff opposite each other and call it over word for word, bracket for bracket. You will be amazed what errors can creep in or you can miss with a cursory review. All marked up changes need to be ticked off once done. Deduct US$100 for every physical tick not marked off.

Rugged African annual report tip 11 Despite the fact that auditors are extremely finicky about their figures in the annual financials section they can be lax about submitting a decent logo and letterhead. Sort this out early. Kill all the most basic things early. When an auditor suggests that the underlining under a total should be bolder, don’t laugh in their face. Laugh behind their back. They are sensitive people.

Rugged African annual report tip 12 Cancel the CEO’s leave before you even start the annual report design and project management. These guys run whenever things get hot.

Rugged African annual report tip 13 Never assume that your auditor is available on the third day past your deadline to review your annual report immediately. They are always busy doing something else and will generally add a day or two to the timetable. If you laughed at his emboldened underline comment, don’t expect sign off for a week.

Rugged African annual report tip 15 Never stick to any deadline, prepare to miss every one and have a back up for every one. Don’t trust anyone to stick to a deadline. Be a man. Don’t associate with people that get upset about these things – when they are shouting at you, say quietly, John Wayne style “how do we resolve the problem?”

Thanks to IRWebReport for the “sissy” recommendations which we summarised quite considerably above. Actually, all of the tips above are relevant it just seems like there’s no time to look at annual reports as strategically as the First World does. With limited time and budgets and resources and serious practical barriers its easy to lose focus on the high level stuff. The focus is providing the raw basics and just getting the job done.