When the projector fails, the pack must still stand

I sat a briefing last winter in a room where the building’s generator took nine minutes to catch. Nobody had a paper pack. Nine minutes is long enough for a chair to start on any other business and never return to the figures.

We print. Not out of nostalgia — out of the same instinct that keeps a signed minute on paper. The PDF goes to directors who join by line. The bound run goes to the table. If the two ever diverge, the paper is canonical for that meeting; we reprint rather than ask people to squint at a revision emailed at 8 a.m.

Paper also slows the addition of charts. It is easy to drop another slide into a deck. It is harder to argue for another leaf when someone has to pay for the extra impression and the secretary has to re-collate. That friction is useful. A board that cannot agree to print a figure probably should not be discussing it.

I still use a screen when a director needs to zoom a map of aged invoices. That is an annex moment, not a headline moment. Headline figures should survive a failed bulb.