# Exec Readout Prep > Exec Readout Prep - Skill: `shwetank/exec-readout-prep` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add shwetank/exec-readout-prep` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/shwetank/exec-readout-prep/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: shwetank (https://skillmd.com/u/shwetank) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/shwetank/exec-readout-prep --- # Exec Readout Prep Executive meetings are decided before they start or not at all. The readout that "goes well" but produces no decision is a failure with good production values. This skill preps for the decision, not the performance. ## Step 1: Name the ask — one sentence, falsifiable Before slides, before narrative: > *"I am asking [who] to approve [what] by [when], which costs [what] and unblocks [what]."* If the user can't produce this sentence, the meeting isn't ready to book. "Alignment" and "visibility" are not asks — push until there is a decision someone can say yes or no to. If it's genuinely an FYI readout, fine: say so on slide one, so nobody hunts for the hidden ask. ## Step 2: Map the room For each person in the meeting, one line each: what they care about, what they'll ask, and whether you need their **yes**, their **non-objection**, or just their **awareness**. **Use the memory.** For each attendee registered as a stakeholder, read their `~/bettersense-work-reflections//.md` — past entries hold their question patterns, hot buttons, and how they've reacted to similar asks. Also read `strategy/.md` if present: the ask should be framed as movement on a track leadership has already bought, in the vocabulary they already use. An ask that maps to no known priority is fighting uphill; say that to the user before they book the room. Identify the **most senior skeptic** — the prep is calibrated to them, not to the friendly sponsor. ## Step 3: Pre-wire The cardinal rule: **no decision-maker hears the ask for the first time in the meeting.** - List who needs a 1:1 before the readout (any must-have yes, any likely blocker). - For each pre-wire conversation: share the draft, ask "what would make this a no for you?", and *change the material* based on what you hear. Pre-wiring that doesn't alter the deck was flattery, not pre-wiring. - Recruit the sponsor: whose air cover matters, and what exact sentence do you want them saying when the skeptic pushes? If there's no time to pre-wire, downgrade expectations honestly: the meeting's realistic best outcome is "agreed on the follow-up," not "approved." ## Step 4: Build the material — decision-first Structure (memo or slides, same skeleton): 1. **The ask** — the Step 1 sentence, verbatim, first. 2. **Why now** — the cost of deciding later, in business terms. Urgency from evidence, not adjectives. 3. **Options considered** — the recommendation plus 1–2 real alternatives with honest trade-offs. Execs trust a recommendation more when they can see what it beat. Include "do nothing" and its price. 4. **Risks and mitigations** — name the top 2–3 yourself; an objection you raise is analysis, an objection they raise is a flaw. 5. **The plan if yes** — first three steps, owner, when they'd see evidence it's working. Everything else is appendix. Assume the material gets 90 seconds of true attention; the appendix exists for the person who gives it twenty minutes. ## Step 5: Rehearse the hard five minutes Skip rehearsing the walkthrough; rehearse the interruptions: - The skeptic's most likely objection (you know it from Step 2 — draft the two-sentence answer). - The "why not half the cost / half the scope?" cut-down. Know your actual floor before the meeting, not during it. - The question you're dreading. There's always one; naming it out loud with the user usually shrinks it. - The graceful non-answer for what you genuinely don't know: *"I don't have that number; I'll have it to you by [date]"* beats improvisation every time. ## Afterward Two prompts: - Log the outcome as a dated entry — the decision (and its conditions) via `decision-log`, and anything learned about attendees via `stakeholder-reflect`. Next quarter's readout preps itself from these. - If the ask was approved, note what was promised and when it's due — that promise is now a commitment worth tracking (see `commitments`). ## Anti-patterns - **The ambush.** A big ask, unwired, sprung on a full room. Even when it works, it teaches leadership to brace when you book meetings. - **The data dump.** Twenty slides of evidence, ask on slide nineteen. Decision-makers decide early and spend the rest of the meeting confirming; put the ask where the deciding happens. - **Winning the debate.** Correcting an exec's misframe in public costs more than the point is worth. Park it: *"let me take that offline and come back with the detail."* - **Vague success.** If the user can't say what "this went well" means (approved? follow-up scheduled? skeptic neutralized?), define it in prep. ## Composition - `stakeholder-reflect` / `stakeholder-register` — the exec profiles this skill reads and updates - `strategy-doc` — the vocabulary and tracks the ask should frame against - `the-translator` — when the readout includes AI-technical results needing reframing - `decision-log` — file the decision the meeting produces - `influence-without-authority` — when the real work is coalition-building over weeks, not one meeting