Executive Board

---
name: executive-board
description: Prepare board and investor decisions, narratives, pre-reads and governance communications around material metrics, variance, risks and explicit asks without spin or fabricated confidence.
---

# Executive Board

Use this skill for board/investor pre-reads, board meeting preparation, governance communications, material business updates and decision requests.

A board package is not a company encyclopedia. Its job is to make **material state, decisions, risks and asks** easy to understand and discuss.

## Start with the purpose

Clarify:

- what the board/investor audience needs to decide, approve or understand;
- what changed since the last update;
- which metrics/risks are material;
- what management recommends;
- which decisions/asks require discussion;
- confidentiality and distribution boundaries.

Do not elevate normal operating detail to board level merely because it exists.

## Narrative structure

A useful board narrative usually makes the following clear:

1. what happened;
2. why it happened;
3. how it compares with plan/previous expectations;
4. what management learned;
5. what management is doing next;
6. what decision or help is needed from the board.

Lead with the real situation and the ask. Do not bury bad news after celebratory slides.

## Core material

Select only what is relevant, commonly including:

- headline company/strategic update;
- KPI dashboard with definitions and trend;
- financial actuals and variance versus plan;
- product/customer/commercial evidence;
- top risks and mitigations;
- major people/org items when board-relevant;
- key strategic decisions;
- explicit asks / approvals;
- appendix for detail that should not consume meeting time.

Numbers must reconcile with the underlying source. Do not fabricate missing metrics to make the deck look complete.

## Variance and misses

For material misses:

- state the miss plainly;
- quantify it when evidence allows;
- explain the causal drivers, not excuses;
- distinguish temporary timing from structural change;
- show the corrective action;
- update forecast/assumptions honestly.

Boards generally learn more from precise variance and changed assumptions than from defensive spin.

## Meeting design

When practical, send a pre-read early enough that the live meeting can focus on discussion rather than slide narration. A 48–72 hour window is a common operating heuristic, subject to company cadence and urgency.

Pre-wire genuinely sensitive surprises with the appropriate board stakeholders when governance norms and confidentiality allow. “No surprises” does not mean hiding information; it means creating enough context for a productive formal discussion.

## Investor / governance discipline

Separate:

- factual reporting;
- forecast/management assumptions;
- strategic recommendation;
- formal board decision/approval.

Respect information rights, confidentiality, privilege, securities-law and governance obligations. Pair with `executive-legal` for binding governance, financing, disclosure or securities questions.

## Decision method

1. Identify board-level purpose and audience.
2. Select material facts/metrics and reconcile them.
3. Frame what changed versus plan.
4. Surface top decisions and risks.
5. State management recommendation.
6. Define explicit board asks.
7. Remove operating detail that does not change discussion.
8. Verify the document for consistency, confidentiality and unsupported claims.

## Output contract

Depending on the task, return:

- board narrative/outline;
- decision memo;
- KPI/variance structure;
- risk/ask list;
- speaker prep / likely questions;
- investor update framing.

Use externally appropriate formal prose when producing board/investor-facing artifacts.

## Failure modes

Avoid:

- “everything we did this quarter” decks;
- metrics with changing definitions;
- surprises hidden until the room;
- optimistic forecasts that ignore new evidence;
- stitched specialist prose with no executive narrative;
- vague asks such as “thoughts?” when a decision is actually needed;
- sharing board/legal/comp material with an unnecessarily broad audience.

## Provenance

Original Agentit guidance materially informed by the Board Communications specialist design and board operating heuristics in Sente Labs' OpenExecutive (Apache-2.0). See `THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md`.