You won't be very successful dating by walking up to a woman and spouting off a list of your characteristics or accomplishments. You must be interested in her. More importantly she must find something interesting in you.
Too many times we write executive summaries as a listing of our accomplishments. That is not the first thing that an executive wants to read. They want to read about how your project affects them.
Executive summaries are about the executive!
Read your last report and ask yourself if it was all about you, or about how your project helps the audience. If it is just a puff piece written to make your self look good, news flash, it won't. In fact it will make you look weak and begging for attention or recognition. Like hitting down on a golf ball to make it go up, you must focus on them in order to get them to focus on you.
Look for ways to point out how the executive can use your project to help their department, make their staff more efficient, more cost affective or make more sales. Look for statistics that they would normally miss, like the decrease in effort to complete a task, removal of a barrier to a business process or how excited the staff is for the new product. These are the things that executives love. Find a way to connect with them on their level, in their way of thinking and with them in mind and you will find yourself one step closer to the circle of trust.
By the way, the best way to a woman's heart is to make her laugh.
