Every Friday, someone spends an hour preparing a report that began during a project two years ago. The project has ended, the original recipient has moved roles and the distribution list keeps growing. Nobody has decided whether the report still has a job.
Recurring work needs an owner who can review its purpose, not merely a person who continues producing it. Removing useful reporting carelessly creates risk; preserving everything indefinitely also consumes attention.
Ask which decision the report supports
Identify the actual users and ask what they do differently after reading it. “It keeps people informed” may be true, but ask for an example. Is it used to approve spending, detect an operational issue, meet an obligation or answer an occasional question?
Check dependencies before proposing a change. Another team may use the data even if it rarely replies to the email. Regulatory, contractual, audit and retention requirements need review by the people responsible for them.
Compare the effort with the useful output
Map the preparation steps and distinguish information that must be produced from presentation work that no longer serves a purpose. A smaller audience, reduced frequency or simpler format may solve the problem without eliminating the report.
For an illustrative internal update, the team might discover that only two exception figures drive a weekly decision while the remaining charts duplicate an existing dashboard. That finding supports a specific redesign, not a blanket claim that reports are wasteful.
Agree a reviewable change
Where the responsible owner approves, document what will change, when and how users can raise a problem. A trial pause needs an end date and a way to observe whether an important decision or obligation was missed.
Preserve records according to the organisation’s retention rules. Retiring future production is different from deleting historical evidence. Update instructions and distribution arrangements so a colleague does not quietly restart the old process next month.
At the review, ask whether the change saved meaningful effort and whether anyone lost information they needed. Restore or revise the process if the evidence calls for it.
The leadership skill is making recurring work answerable to a current purpose. A report should continue because someone can explain its value, not because stopping it feels more awkward than producing another copy.