gtm-board-and-investor-communication

What it does

The skill guides how to structure board meetings, investor updates, and executive communication to build trust and drive decisions. It prescribes a narrative-first approach (story, then data), a specific board meeting structure (pre-read, Three Things, decisions, deep dive, closing), and a set of patterns for communicating both good and bad news. It includes detailed templates such as the Pre-Read contents, The Three Things narrative model (What’s Working, What’s Not, What We’re Doing About It), the Four-Tier Metric Hierarchy, and the Bad News Pre-Brief pattern. It also defines patterns for monthly investor updates, cascading strategy, and how to frame progress versus targets. It provides explicit formats, cadence rules, and examples for communicating misses and progress with clarity.

How it works

• Use triggers like board meeting prep, investor updates, or handling misses to activate the guidance.
• Apply the narrative-first rule: open with the journey, then show data.
• Prepare a Pre-Read with a financial dashboard, metric scorecard, and a 2-3 page narrative summary; ensure things readable without presenting raw slides.
• Structure the board meeting into phases: Market context, CEO strategic update using The Three Things, Decision items, Deep dive, Closing.
• Employ The Three Things: What's Working, What's Not, What We're Doing About It, with explicit, specific items and timelines.
• Use The Four-Tier Metric Hierarchy to organize metrics into North Star, Driver Metrics, Health Metrics, and Red Flags, maintaining consistency across quarters.
• Deliver bad news before the board asks via the Pre-Brief pattern: inform the lead director 48-72 hours prior and send a concise board pre-brief email to the entire board.
• For monthly investor updates, follow the specified format: subject line, opening, TL;DR, Key Metrics (consistent table), Key Updates, and Asks, with cadence rules.
• Ensure follow-through in updates referencing prior issues with status and owners.

When to use it

• Triggers include questions like "How do I prepare for our board meeting?" and "What should go in our investor update?" and situations like missing targets or needing a board-friendly narrative.
• Context covers seed through growth-stage organizations, with emphasis on board-to-organization alignment, monthly/quarterly investor updates, and handling misses or strategic pivots.

What it can touch

• Tools: copilot
• It prescribes structured content, templates, and patterns for board decks, narratives, and updates; it does not specify executable code or scripts beyond narrative templates and formats.

Caveats

• License: MIT
• Sections rely on explicit patterns and avoid speculative outcomes; it emphasizes concrete, specific actions over generalized promises and prohibits changing targets without acknowledging misses.
• It enforces a consistent reporting discipline across quarters and warns against mixed messaging or over-optimistic framing that undermines credibility.