One page. Three parts. A clear view.

Sixth episode in the series. The fourth followed a priority on its way down from the executive committee to the front line; the fifth set up a weekly meeting that actually decides. This one takes the opposite route: what travels up from the field to management, and on to the board.

The figure framing this episode comes from The Trust Gap: State of the Workplace Insights, published by Radical Candor on 7 May 2026 and based on 600 US respondents surveyed between 24 February and 30 March 2026. 46% of the executives surveyed feel there is a lack of honest feedback across their company. The sample is small and American, and the report does not break it down by role: read it as a signal rather than a measurement. But the signal is telling — nearly one executive in two senses that what reaches them is not quite what is happening.

You have already asked for more information

No leadership team sits still in the face of that fog. Three responses come up almost everywhere, and all three are sound instincts.

The monthly dashboard: the figures arrive on time, neatly arranged — already a lot. But what is going wrong stays between the lines. The full study: a hundred serious, well-documented pages that nobody has time to read before deciding. The open door: "come and see me if there's a problem". People do come — on the day the problem has become a crisis.

What the three have in common: they all bring facts. None of them proposes what to do, or says how sure we are. Adding information does not make information more accurate.

What gets lost on the way up

Nobody lies. Each level simplifies a little, in good faith, to keep it short. Three losses are enough to distort what reaches the top.

The summary that erases. A hundred-page study becomes a one-page table. That is necessary — nobody will read the hundred pages. But the author's caveats, the "subject to" and the fragile assumptions stay in the report. The table keeps none of them.

The estimate that became a certainty. A cost item roughly guessed at the start of the study reaches the meeting with two decimal places. Nothing was falsified: the precision of the layout simply replaced the uncertainty of the calculation. And the board decides on a figure nobody told it was fragile.

The bad news that waits. People hope to turn things around before raising it, which is human. They raise it when few options remain. The board then discovers — sometimes years later — what it would rather have known in the first quarter.

One page, three parts

What follows requires no new tool and no extra report. It requires changing the shape of what travels up, and that shape fits on a single page.

① Where we stand. The facts, plus two or three figures that genuinely describe your business. Standard accounting ratios say little about a long-cycle activity, or a project that will only generate revenue in three years: two indicators the directors understand beat a full page they skim.

② The options. Two or three possible paths, with what each one costs and what it risks. A single option presented is a decision already taken, disguised as information.

③ One recommendation. The one the team would defend if asked for its view. It takes nothing away from those who decide: the board keeps the decision, but no longer takes it blind.

And next to every figure, one word: measured, estimated or assumed. It is the simplest rule, and the one that changes the most. Nobody expects a team to know everything; we ask it to say what it knows and what it assumes. A decision is not a game of dice.

Why this matters in New Caledonia

In New Caledonia, many organisations report to a board whose shareholders — public or private — do not live the business day to day. What they expect from a chief executive is simple: to be told when things are going wrong, rather than finding out later in an audit. In lean teams where everyone carries several files, one clear page is worth more than a complete report nobody had time to read.

Your reporting system probably does not need to be rebuilt. It needs a shape that helps people decide — and that is a much shorter project.

Source: Radical Candor, The Trust Gap: State of the Workplace Insights, press release of 7 May 2026 (600 US respondents, survey conducted 24 February to 30 March 2026).