The Click at 10:12 PM
The blue light from the monitor is a cold, clinical thing that seems to seep into the pores of my skin, settling somewhere deep in the marrow. Julia’s finger hovers over the left-click button. It is exactly 10:12 PM. In the silence of the 12th floor, the hum of the HVAC system sounds like a heavy, industrial sigh. She clicks. The ‘Portfolio Performance Review’-a document containing 32 pages of charts, tables, and meticulously formatted executive summaries-is launched into the digital ether. It’s gone. It’s done. She knows, with a certainty that borders on the religious, that her boss will look at exactly one chart on page 2 and then bury the rest in a folder labeled ‘Monthly Archives’ where it will remain, unread and unloved, for the next 42 years.
I’ve been thinking about Julia a lot lately because I spent my Saturday morning in a similar state of frustrated performance. I was putting together a modular shelving unit that arrived in a box that looked like it had been dropped from a low-orbiting satellite. There were 2 missing cam locks. Just 2. But those 2 missing pieces meant the entire structure, while physically present and standing, was fundamentally a lie. It looked like a bookshelf, but it couldn’t hold the weight of a single heavy encyclopedia without collapsing. I finished it anyway. I tightened the other 22 screws until my knuckles turned white, and I pushed it against the wall. It’s a performance of a bookshelf. It satisfies the visual requirement of furniture without fulfilling the actual utility of storage. This is exactly what corporate reporting has become: the assembly of wobbly structures designed to satisfy a visual expectation of ‘oversight’ while providing almost zero functional support for decision-making.
The Honesty of Archaeology
Julia’s report is a ritual. It is a sacrifice of time and sanity offered up to the gods of Corporate Governance. If she were to submit a single page with the three numbers that actually matter, she would be seen as lazy. Her competence is measured not by the clarity of her insights, but by the thickness of the document. The 29 pages of filler are the ‘fealty’ she pays to her paycheck. It is institutional theater. We have built an entire economy around the production of artifacts that no one intends to use. We are drafting blueprints for buildings that will never be built, and we are doing it with a level of precision that would make a watchmaker weep.
The Totem of Power
I once spent 2 weeks illustrating a bone needle from the Neolithic era. It was beautiful, but it was just a needle. My boss at the time-a man who once tried to tell me that the shade of gray I used for shadows was ‘too pessimistic’-insisted that I include a 102-page addendum explaining the cultural significance of bone-smoothing techniques. He didn’t read it. I know he didn’t because I included a recipe for sourdough bread in the middle of page 52, and he never mentioned it. He just wanted to feel the weight of the paper in his hand. He wanted to feel that he had ‘ordered’ a comprehensive study. The report was a totem of his power, not a source of his knowledge.
The Artifact Economy (Estimated Volume)
We are drowning in these totems. The average mid-sized company generates enough internal reports to fill 202 physical filing cabinets every quarter, yet when a crisis actually hits, the leaders are almost always operating on gut instinct and 12-hour-old rumors. The reports are too slow, too heavy, and too focused on looking ‘complete’ rather than being ‘actionable.’ The ritual of the monthly report is actually a defense mechanism. If you spend all your time reporting on what happened 32 days ago, you don’t have to face the terrifying, real-time chaos of what is happening right now. It is a way of looking backward so you don’t have to look at the road ahead.
Shifting the Paradigm
There is a better way to do this, but it requires a level of vulnerability that most organizations aren’t ready for. It requires admitting that we don’t need 32 pages of fluff. It requires moving away from the ‘Monthly Sacrifice’ and toward something that actually moves the needle. This is where tools like best factoring softwarecome into play, shifting the paradigm from the performative static report to the real-time, functional dashboard. Instead of Julia sitting in a dark office at 10:12 PM trying to make a bar chart look pretty, the data should be living, breathing, and visible to everyone who actually needs to make a choice. Visibility shouldn’t be a monthly event; it should be the default state of the business.
When I was building that bookshelf with the 2 missing pieces, I realized that I was complicit in the lie. I wanted the room to look ‘finished’ more than I wanted the shelf to be ‘strong.’ I think we do the same thing with our work. We want our departments to look ‘managed’ more than we want them to be ‘efficient.’ We would rather have a beautiful, unread report than a messy, real-time conversation about why the numbers are down. We value the artifact over the activity.
The Archaeological Approach
In my work as an illustrator, I have to be very careful not to ‘over-restore’ an image. If a shard is missing a corner, I leave it missing. I don’t draw in what I think should be there; I draw what is actually there. If corporate reporting took this archaeological approach, Julia’s 32 pages would likely shrink to 2. Those 2 pages would be dense, difficult, and perhaps a little ugly, but they would be honest. They would show the cracks. They would show the 2 missing pieces of the puzzle instead of trying to hide them behind 29 pages of stock photography and decorative bullet points.
There is a psychological cost to this performative labor. It’s not just about the 12 hours Julia loses every month; it’s about the erosion of her sense of purpose. When you know your work is being ignored, you stop putting your soul into the parts that actually matter. You become a professional furniture-assembler who doesn’t care if the screws are tight. You just want the box to be empty. You just want the ‘Send’ button to be clicked.
I’ve noticed that when I’m working on a reconstruction for a museum, I’m much more precise than when I’m drawing for a private collector. The museum actually uses the drawing to educate 1002 people a day. The collector just wants something to hang on the wall to look ‘cultured.’ The purpose of the work dictates the quality of the effort. If we want Julia to be a high-performer, we have to give her a reason to believe her data will be used to steer the ship, not just to decorate the captain’s office.
From Autopsy to Living Feed
Monthly Anxiety
Replaced by real-time visibility.
Institutional Theater
Replaced by functional collaboration.
The Report Artifact
Replaced by actionable toolsets.
Imagine a world where the first of the month isn’t a deadline for a 32-page autopsy of the previous month. Imagine if, instead, it was just another day of looking at a live feed of performance metrics. The anxiety of the ‘big report’ disappears when the information is always available. The ritual of fealty is replaced by the reality of collaboration. We don’t need more reports; we need more clarity. We don’t need more theater; we need more truth.
Rebuilding the Shelf
I eventually took that bookshelf apart. It bothered me too much. I went to the hardware store, found the 2 missing cam locks-which cost me exactly
$2.32
-and I rebuilt the thing properly. It took another 2 hours of my life, but now I can put my heavy art history books on the top shelf without fear. It’s no longer a performance. It’s a tool. We should treat our data with the same respect. Stop building reports that are designed to fall apart the moment someone asks a real question. Stop sending the 32-page ghost into the archives.
Are you more interested in the appearance of control, or the reality of results?
The choice dictates the design of your data.