How an electrical fittings maker left eighty pages behind

The company makes fittings in a yard off the Kakheti highway. For two years the finance team had added every chart a department asked for, on the theory that a thick pack looked thorough. Independent directors began sending apologies. The March 2025 meeting spent forty minutes locating the cash variance, which had been printed three times in three different formats.

We asked for the last three packs and the secretary’s pencil marks. The marks stopped around page twelve. Everything after that had been circulated in the name of completeness.

The new headline sheet carried six figures: cash, gross margin, overdue receivables, scrap rate, overdue purchase orders, and headcount versus plan. Scrap hurt. The plant manager had liked a full-page Pareto that now lives in the annex. He still brings a spare copy of that Pareto to the meeting. The chair no longer waits for him to find it.

I mention the leftover chart because a cut is not a miracle. Someone loses a favourite page. The test is whether the meeting reaches capex before lunch. In April, it did. The pack is twelve pages plus a thin annex. The secretary now sends it on Wednesday, not Thursday night.