Turn a week of news into something a board can read

A workflow that reads a story from three seats at once — chief executive, finance, and the board — so the briefing already answers the questions each of them will ask.

The problem

An executive summary written from one perspective gets taken apart by the people who hold the other ones. The finance question and the governance question are both foreseeable, and both cheaper to answer before the meeting.

The workflow

  1. 1

    CEO Briefing: Decide in 90 Days

    The strategic reading: what it means for position, and what decision is being asked for.

  2. 2

    Hit to Revenue, Margins and Cash

    The same story for the numbers — what it does to costs, revenue and the shape of the plan.

  3. 3

    Questions for the Board

    And for governance: exposure, oversight, and what the board would be expected to have asked.

What you put in

The two or three stories from the week that anybody is going to raise.

What you get back

The last step answers under these headings. They are read from Questions for the Board itself, so this list changes when the template does — it is not a transcript of a run.

Setting it up

  1. Open the workflow builder and start a new workflow.
  2. Add the three templates above as steps, in that order.
  3. Fill in what your company does on the profile page; all three steps read it, and all three are much less useful without it.
  4. Save it, and run it the day before the meeting rather than the morning of.
Build this workflow Or start from one that exists

If it does not work

The three sections say the same thing.

On a story with one dimension, they will — and three near-identical readings is a signal that it is a one-line item rather than an agenda point.

The numbers are vague.

They are as specific as the source. Nothing here has access to your figures, and a model that produced precise ones from an article would be inventing them.

Other recipes

News triage workflow A three-step workflow that tells you what a story actually is, whether it touches you, and what to do about it — so a long article becomes a yes or a no. Competitive intelligence workflow A workflow that turns a competitor's news into the effect on your position, the opening it leaves, and the briefing you would give a leadership team. Regulation monitoring workflow A workflow that reads policy and legal news for what it obliges you to do, by when, and who inside the organisation owns it. Multi-model analysis workflow A workflow that runs the same question through more than one provider and then has a third step look at where the two disagree. Cheap model first workflow A workflow that screens with a small fast model and only sends what survives to a large one, so most articles never reach the expensive step. Document review workflow A workflow for contracts, proposals and reports: the obligations it creates, and then an adversarial pass over what it is quietly not saying. Client news monitoring workflow A workflow for people who advise: what a story means for the client, whether it is a problem, and whether it is a reason to call.