Why monthly reports nobody reads are a sign of the wrong report, not the wrong month

A report that goes unread isn't a frequency problem. Changing it from monthly to weekly, or weekly to daily, doesn't fix a report that wasn't answering a real question to begin with — it just produces the same unread report more often.

Why reports go unread

Most unread reports were built around what data was easiest to extract, not around a specific decision someone needed to make. A report that's comprehensive but doesn't clearly say "here's what needs your attention" asks the reader to do the analysis themselves — which defeats the purpose of reporting in the first place.

What a report people actually read looks like

It leads with what changed and what needs a decision, not a full data dump. It's built around one or two specific questions the recipient actually has — are we on target, what's at risk — rather than every metric that happens to be available. And it's honest about what's fine, so the reader can trust that silence on a topic means it's genuinely under control, not overlooked.

A fast way to test an existing report

Ask the person who's supposed to read it what decision they made last time based on it. If the answer is vague or "none," the report isn't failing because of timing — it's answering a question nobody actually asked.