The report nobody reads

I was in a review meeting where someone listed the weekly reporting pack with some pride. Fourteen reports. I asked, not meaning to be rude, which of them had changed a decision in the last quarter. The pause went on long enough to become the point of the meeting.

They are never free. Each one holds a query, a schedule, a format, and a person who quietly repairs it when the source system changes underneath. That cost is invisible because it is spread thinly across afternoons, and nobody has ever been thanked for the reports they did not build.

The test I use now has three parts. Who reads this. What decision does it inform. What would they do differently if the number moved. If the third answer is nothing, the report is a habit rather than information, and habits should be allowed to end.

Switching one off is easier than anyone expects. Stop sending it, and say clearly that you have stopped. If nobody asks inside a month, that was your answer. In four years I have seen two come back, and both of them deserved to, and both got better after somebody finally cared enough to complain.

MMB