Starter briefs
The brief is the part of a session that decides whether it is any good. The advisers read it before the room opens and arrive hostile to what is in it, so a vague brief produces a vague argument.
Answer the prompts in your own words. Nothing here is a form and nothing is scored. A paragraph against each one is plenty, and the specific, awkward version of an answer is worth more than the polished one, because the specific version is what the room can attack.
The investor pitch brief
A founder with a meeting in the diary and a pitch that has only ever been read by people who like them.
- The single sentence you open with, written exactly as you will say it.
- What you are raising, on what terms, and what the money buys.
- The number in the deck you are least able to defend, and why it is there.
- The competitor a sceptical investor will name, and your honest answer.
- What has to be true about the market for this plan to work at all.
- The question you are hoping nobody asks.
The advisers read this before the room opens and arrive with opposed priorities. One will price the cash position, one the delivery risk, one the distribution story. Expect the question you were hoping nobody asks to be asked in the first few minutes, out loud, while you are speaking.
The board question and answer brief
An operator taking a difficult number, a missed target or a change of direction into a board or executive meeting.
- The decision or the number you are taking into the room, in one sentence.
- What changed since the last meeting, stated without softening it.
- The three questions you expect, in the words the board will use.
- Who in the room has already made up their mind, and about what.
- What you want to walk out with, and what you will settle for.
The room will interrupt. That is the point of rehearsing out loud rather than writing an answer down: an answer you can only deliver uninterrupted is an answer you do not have. Expect to be cut off mid sentence and to have to find the thread again, which is the part reading never rehearses.
The written plan brief
Anyone holding a plan that nobody has argued with, who would rather find the weak assumption now than after committing to it.
- The plan itself, or the part of it you want attacked, in a few paragraphs.
- The decision this plan commits you to, and how reversible it is.
- Three assumptions the plan rests on, named as assumptions.
- What you would have to see to abandon it.
- The constraint you have been treating as fixed.
The useful output is rarely the verdict. It is the assumption two advisers price differently, because that is the one carrying the weight of the plan. Expect them to argue with each other about it rather than with you, and expect the transcript to be the artefact you take away.
The build against buy brief
An engineering lead choosing between building a component and paying for one, or defending a design that nobody senior has read yet.
- The system or the choice under review, described as it would be to a peer.
- The constraint you designed against, and where it came from.
- What you are choosing not to build, and why that is safe.
- The failure mode you would be most embarrassed by.
- What this costs to run, and who pays for it.
- The part of this you would change if the team were twice the size.
The advisers do not share your priorities. One will ask what happens under load, one will ask what it costs to keep running, one will ask whether the team can ship it at all. Expect the design conversation to become a staffing conversation, which is usually where it should have started.
Using one
Copy the prompts you need into the brief field when you start a session. There is no template picker in the product and there is not going to be one: a list of options in front of an empty field is one more decision between a person and the thing they came to do.
You can also write nothing like any of these. The room needs a document to be hostile to, and it does not care which shape it arrives in.