From 0ae943ee6972d5c34bd796c791c130f599ee810d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Craig Jennings Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2026 01:54:17 -0500 Subject: feat(workflows): promote meeting-prep to a general template Meeting-prep was project-only. I generalized its project-specific references (transcript-home path, issue tracker, knowledge file, worked-example doc) to neutral terms and moved it into claude-templates so any project's .ai/ picks it up. The pre-wire supporting doc travels beside it as meeting-prep.pre-wire.org. I added the workflow entry and trigger phrases to INDEX.org. I flipped daily-prep's two conditional meeting-prep references, and its trailing changelog claim, to direct links now that the workflow ships as a template. --- .ai/workflows/INDEX.org | 3 + .ai/workflows/daily-prep.org | 6 +- .ai/workflows/meeting-prep.org | 136 +++++++++++++++++++++ .ai/workflows/meeting-prep.pre-wire.org | 37 ++++++ claude-templates/.ai/workflows/INDEX.org | 3 + claude-templates/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org | 6 +- claude-templates/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.org | 136 +++++++++++++++++++++ .../.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.pre-wire.org | 37 ++++++ 8 files changed, 358 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) create mode 100644 .ai/workflows/meeting-prep.org create mode 100644 .ai/workflows/meeting-prep.pre-wire.org create mode 100644 claude-templates/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.org create mode 100644 claude-templates/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.pre-wire.org diff --git a/.ai/workflows/INDEX.org b/.ai/workflows/INDEX.org index c03c92f..218709f 100644 --- a/.ai/workflows/INDEX.org +++ b/.ai/workflows/INDEX.org @@ -33,6 +33,9 @@ This index must list every =.org= file in =.ai/workflows/= except this one and e - =daily-prep.org= — prep brief for the next workday. Two modes: full-prep (default) or standup-only. - Full-prep triggers: "let's prep for tomorrow", "daily prep" - Standup-only triggers: "what's my standup report", "let's do the daily standup report", "give me the standup brief" +- =meeting-prep.org= — deep prep doc for one specific upcoming meeting that warrants more than a glance: decode the invite (who/why/timing/objective), gather grounded context, draft the eight-section prep, pre-wire and schedule the prep block, review with Craig, wire into the day's daily-prep, and close the loop post-meeting by extracting action items into =todo.org=. The per-meeting companion to =daily-prep.org='s whole-day brief. + - Triggers: "let's prep for the meeting", "prep me for the call with ", "build a prep doc for ", "let's run the meeting-prep workflow", "meeting prep", "let's prep the call" + - Supporting doc: =meeting-prep.pre-wire.org= (the full Manager Tools pre-wire method, used by Phase 3.5). Not independently triggerable. - =triage-intake.org= — on-demand triage *engine*: a source-agnostic sweep that loads source plugins, classifies what's new since last check (Action / FYI / Noise-keep / Noise-trash), produces one synthesized summary, and offers to run the routine actions. Carries no sources of its own — every source comes from a =triage-intake..org= plugin globbed from both =.ai/workflows/= (general) and =.ai/project-workflows/= (project-specific). Lighter scope than =daily-prep.org='s triage section. - Triggers: "do a triage intake", "triage intake", "what's new?", "what's new since I last checked", "do a sweep", "check email, calendar, and PRs" - Source adapters: =triage-intake.*.org= (=personal-gmail=, =personal-calendar=, =cmail=, =github-prs= ship general; projects add their own). Not independently triggerable — the engine loads them; "run the triage-intake workflow" always routes to the engine, never a plugin. diff --git a/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org b/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org index fcc983d..327e519 100644 --- a/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org +++ b/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org @@ -194,11 +194,11 @@ Capture the meeting list with what's known about each (time, owner, official age Beyond today, scan the next 5 days from the Phase A forward window — read the calendar today *and the next five days*, reading it rather than glancing. For each meeting in that window, do a quick read (who's invited and who accepted, why it's being held, the timing, the objective) and surface three buckets at the final review: -1. *Meetings that need prep.* A substantive upcoming meeting — an external partner, a negotiation, a review of specific work or data, a first call with someone — that has no =working/-call-prep/= doc yet. Offer to run the meeting-prep workflow where the project has one, or add a prep task. Some meetings take more than five minutes to prepare; catching them several days out is the whole point of looking ahead. +1. *Meetings that need prep.* A substantive upcoming meeting — an external partner, a negotiation, a review of specific work or data, a first call with someone — that has no =working/-call-prep/= doc yet. Offer to run the [[file:meeting-prep.org][meeting-prep workflow]], or add a prep task. Some meetings take more than five minutes to prepare; catching them several days out is the whole point of looking ahead. 2. *Traps.* A time-zone mismatch on a travel day, a double-booking, a talk-heavy meeting that will overrun into the next, a recurring meeting that isn't needed this cycle. 3. *Focus blocks to protect.* Open mornings or afternoons in the window worth blocking now for big work, before they get booked over. -This is a scan-and-flag pass, not a full prep — the deep prep for any one meeting is the meeting-prep workflow's job where one exists. Keep it to the three buckets and surface them in =* Heads-up= (Phase 7) or as forward tasks / Anchor Tasks; don't add a new prep-doc section. +This is a scan-and-flag pass, not a full prep — the deep prep for any one meeting is the [[file:meeting-prep.org][meeting-prep workflow]]'s job. Keep it to the three buckets and surface them in =* Heads-up= (Phase 7) or as forward tasks / Anchor Tasks; don't add a new prep-doc section. ** Phase 2: Planned vs. Actual Review @@ -612,4 +612,4 @@ Phase 3's inline source scans — sub-steps 3b (email), 3c (mark-read), 3d (Slac Craig's call. The prep doc is now *born* in =daily-prep/YYYY-MM-DD-daily-prep.org= and never moves; the dated files accumulate there as both working location and archive. A single stable symlink at the project root — =daily-prep.org= — points at the current day's file, repointed each prep run with =ln -sf=. Replaces the prior model where the doc was born in =inbox/YYYY-MM-DD-daily-prep.org=, yesterday's stayed in =inbox/=, and older docs were =mv='d into the =daily-prep/= archive (old Phase 8). Consumers resolve the root symlink instead of computing a dated filename or searching =inbox/=: the Emacs opener =C-c p d= (=cj/open-project-daily-prep=, repointed from =inbox/today-prep.org= to =daily-prep.org= — handoff filed to the =.emacs.d= project 2026-06-01), next-day Phase 2, and the standup lookback (Phase A step 5, which now globs =daily-prep/= and takes the file before the symlink's target). Touchpoints updated: Phase A step 5 + slim-Phase-A step 2 (lookback), standup-only "Where the brief lands," Phase 8 (rewritten as "Repoint the Current-Day Symlink"). Cross-workflow: =triage-intake.org='s sentinel-anchor fallback dropped its =inbox/= prep-doc path. (=wrap-it-up.org= was left as-is — its =inbox/= references are about =lint-followups.org= routing, not the prep doc, so they stay correct.) Migration is one-time per project: move existing =inbox/*-daily-prep.org= into =daily-prep/= and create the root symlink at the most recent. *** 2026-06-10: Manager Tools prep additions — 5-day look-ahead, daily big-ball, decline gate -Three additions folded in from the Manager Tools / Career Tools casts on preparing-for-your-day and meeting prep. None adds a new prep-doc section (the fixed-section rule holds — the look-ahead feeds Heads-up / Anchor Tasks). (1) *5-Day Look-Ahead* — Phase A widens the calendar fetch from the prep day to the prep day plus the next 5 days, and a new Phase 1 sub-section scans that forward window for three buckets: meetings that need prep, traps (time-zone mismatch, double-booking, overrun, an unneeded recurring meeting), and focus blocks to protect. A scan-and-flag pass, not full prep. (2) *Daily big-ball* — Phase 3 sub-step 3a item 5 pulls one important-but-not-urgent (Quadrant-2) task per day and slates a ~15-minute chunk, since strategic work only lands when broken into small daily pieces. (3) *Decline gate* — Phase 1 item 5 reframes "what Craig needs" from attending to contributing, and adds a send-regrets gate: a meeting with no objective and no contribution is a decline candidate for Craig's call at review. The look-ahead's meeting-prep references are conditional ("where the project has one") because meeting-prep is currently a project-only workflow, not a template. +Three additions folded in from the Manager Tools / Career Tools casts on preparing-for-your-day and meeting prep. None adds a new prep-doc section (the fixed-section rule holds — the look-ahead feeds Heads-up / Anchor Tasks). (1) *5-Day Look-Ahead* — Phase A widens the calendar fetch from the prep day to the prep day plus the next 5 days, and a new Phase 1 sub-section scans that forward window for three buckets: meetings that need prep, traps (time-zone mismatch, double-booking, overrun, an unneeded recurring meeting), and focus blocks to protect. A scan-and-flag pass, not full prep. (2) *Daily big-ball* — Phase 3 sub-step 3a item 5 pulls one important-but-not-urgent (Quadrant-2) task per day and slates a ~15-minute chunk, since strategic work only lands when broken into small daily pieces. (3) *Decline gate* — Phase 1 item 5 reframes "what Craig needs" from attending to contributing, and adds a send-regrets gate: a meeting with no objective and no contribution is a decline candidate for Craig's call at review. The look-ahead's meeting-prep references link directly to =meeting-prep.org= (promoted to a template 2026-06-10). diff --git a/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.org b/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.org new file mode 100644 index 0000000..162ae30 --- /dev/null +++ b/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.org @@ -0,0 +1,136 @@ +#+TITLE: Meeting-Prep Workflow +#+AUTHOR: Craig Jennings & Claude +#+DATE: 2026-06-10 + +* Overview + +Build a focused prep doc for a specific upcoming meeting so Craig walks in knowing what the meeting is, what the other side wants, what he wants to settle, the positions he can state without relitigating, and the data he might be asked about. The doc lives in =working/-call-prep/= during the lead-up and stays as the meeting's record afterward (notes + the action items it produced). + +This is the per-meeting companion to =daily-prep.org=. Daily-prep is morning rounds across the whole day; meeting-prep is the deep prep for one meeting that warrants it. The two are wired: daily-prep links to an existing call-prep doc when the prep day has one, and meeting-prep links forward into the day's daily-prep when the meeting falls on a prepped day. + +* Problem We're Solving + +High-stakes or substance-heavy meetings go better with preparation, and Craig prefers detailed prep before them. Without a formal workflow the prep is ad hoc: it gets done from memory, the relevant prior context (past calls, the data under discussion, decisions already locked) isn't pulled together, and the same questions get re-derived live. Worse, the action items a meeting produces often never get captured — the gap that appears when a filed transcript carries committed deliverables that never become tasks. + +A repeatable workflow makes the prep thorough and consistent, keeps every prep artifact in one discoverable place, and closes the loop by folding the meeting's action items back into =todo.org=. + +* Exit Criteria + +The prep is done when: + +1. A prep doc exists at =working/-call-prep/-.org= with the section set below filled to the extent the available context allows. +2. Every section that can be grounded in real context (calendar, prior transcripts, =todo.org=, the project's issue tracker, the project's notes) is grounded — not invented. Gaps Craig must fill are named explicitly rather than guessed. +3. Craig has reviewed it and confirmed nothing's missing (his read of the other side's asks, his hold positions, the data he expects to be pressed on). +4. If the meeting falls on a day with a daily-prep doc, the prep doc is linked from that day's prep. + +Post-meeting, the loop is closed when the meeting's action items have been extracted into =todo.org= (see Phase 6). + +* When to Use This Workflow + +Trigger when a specific meeting warrants more than a glance: + +- Craig says "let's prep for the meeting", "prep me for the call with ", "build a prep doc for ", "let's run the meeting-prep workflow". +- Daily-prep surfaces a prep-day meeting that has real substance (an external partner, a negotiation, a review of specific data/work, a first call with someone) and no prep doc yet — offer to run this. + +Don't use it for routine recurring ceremonies (standup, iteration review) unless Craig is presenting something specific. Those are covered by the daily-prep standup brief and the retro-prep step. + +Distinct from: +- =daily-prep.org= — the whole-day brief; meeting-prep is one meeting deep. +- =process-meeting-transcript.org= — the *post*-meeting record (recording → transcript → archive). Meeting-prep's Phase 6 hands off to it / consumes its output for action-item extraction. + +* Approach: How We Work Together + +** Phase 0 — Identify the meeting and confirm it warrants prep + +Establish which meeting and pull its calendar event: + +#+begin_src text +mcp__google-calendar__list-events account="work" (and/or "personal"), the day in question +#+end_src + +From the event capture: title, date/time (render in PT/CT/ET per Craig's three-timezone convention when sharing times), duration, organizer, attendee list with response status, location/medium (conferenceData), and any agenda link in the description. If the meeting clearly doesn't warrant a full prep doc (a routine ceremony, a quick sync), say so and offer the lighter touch instead. + +*Read the meeting, and gate it.* For most of Craig's meetings the title and agenda are already known, so the heavy "decode an ambiguous invite" pass isn't needed here — the four-question diagnostic below lives better in the *daily-prep* calendar scan, as a quick read of each upcoming meeting. What this phase always applies is the gate: *is there a purpose here for Craig?* "He was invited" is not, by itself, a reason to attend — if there's no objective for him and no contribution to make, the right output is "decline / send regrets," not a prep doc. + +For a genuinely ambiguous invite (vague title, no agenda, not a standing meeting), run the full four-question decode (Manager Tools, "Meeting Preparation Questions"): + +1. *Who is invited, and who accepted?* Tells you the importance, the atmosphere, and how to behave. More people — or more senior people — means more serious / higher-impact. Counter-signal: the more benign or vague the title, the more likely the meeting is contentious, because vagueness is message-control and good news rarely gets controlled. +2. *Why is it being held?* The synchronous need an email couldn't carry — explanation, cooperation, coordination, orientation, contention, or celebration. +3. *What's the timing?* Less notice skews negative/urgent: under 24h is big and usually bad; more than a week out is usually benign; 24h–1 week is the hardest to read, so go by the org's norms. +4. *What's the objective?* Three layers — the *spoken* objective (what's broadcast), the *unspoken* objective (the real reason, inferred from who/why/timing), and *your* objective (what you'll get out of it). + +** Phase 1 — Gather context (don't re-derive what's already written) + +Manager Tools' first recommendation is "get all the available information" — agenda, the full invitee/attendee list (and who accepted), and the supporting materials. Pull together everything that bears on the meeting, in parallel where possible: + +- *Agenda + attendee list + supporting docs* — if they weren't circulated, that's a gap to note (and, for a real meeting, a thing Craig could politely ask the convener for). The who-accepted list feeds the "who" question above. +- *Prior related meetings* — search the project's transcript home (wherever recordings/transcripts are filed, e.g. an =assets/= dir) for earlier calls with the same people or on the same topic. Read the relevant ones; cite them in the prep as "background, don't re-derive." +- *Related =todo.org= tasks* — the open tasks that touch this meeting's topic (the data under review, the relationship, the deliverable). These carry the decisions already made and the open questions. +- *Issue-tracker tickets* — any ticket in the project's tracker that the meeting is about (status, body, recent comments). +- *Prior prep docs* — an earlier =working/-call-prep/= for the same thread (e.g. a recurring partner). +- *Project knowledge* — the project's notes / knowledge files (=notes.org=, or a project =knowledge.org=) sections that frame the relationship or strategy. + +The goal of this phase is that the prep doc *summarizes and points at* existing context rather than rebuilding it. Link to the source; don't paste it. + +** Phase 2 — Set up the working dir + +Per the working-files convention, create =working/-call-prep/= and write the prep doc as =-.org= inside it. The slug names the meeting/thread (=vendor-review=, =partner-intro=, =board-update=), not a snapshot date. Supporting artifacts (a data summary, a draft Craig will bring, a diagram) live in the same dir. Add or update the inbound link in the relevant =todo.org= task so future sessions find it. + +** Phase 3 — Draft the prep doc + +Use this section set: + +1. *Header* — one block: meeting name, date + time, medium/location, organizer, attendees (who's actually in the room), tracker/doc links, and a "background — don't re-derive" line pointing at the prior transcripts and the source task. +2. *What this meeting is* — one short paragraph framing it: who called it, why, and the natural shape (who walks whom through what). +3. *What they want out of it (the objective read)* — the other side's goals, in three layers: the *spoken* objective (what the invite/agenda broadcasts), the *unspoken* objective (the real reason, inferred from who/why/timing), and ordered by what they'll lead with. Grounded in who they are and prior context, not guessed. +4. *Questions they'll probably ask (and your one-line answers)* — anticipate the questions and pre-write Craig's crisp answer to each. This is the highest-value section: it's the rehearsal. +5. *Craig's objective and contribution* — the heart of the prep, and the Manager Tools reframe: not "attend" but "contribute." What does Craig want to *achieve*, and what's the active role he'll play — the decisions to land, the asks to make, the positions to state, the proposal to make, or (for a listen-heavy meeting) the specific value he'll add. Name anything worth *pre-wiring* (socializing with an attendee beforehand so it lands and gets supported). +6. *Positions already locked* — decisions made in prior sessions so Craig can *state* them, not relitigate. Pull these from the related tasks and transcripts. +7. *Relevant data at a glance* — the tables/figures Craig might be pressed on (e.g. the dataset breakdown), summarized to render width per the org-table standard (and no more than 200 columns, with cells becoming multi-line cells), with a link to the full detail. +8. *Notes & next steps (fill during / after)* — left open for the meeting itself. + +Not every meeting needs all eight. A first intro call may have no "positions locked" or "data" section; a data review leans heavily on them. Include the sections the meeting actually has; don't pad. + +** Phase 3.5 — Pre-wire and schedule the prep block + +Two Manager Tools habits that sit between drafting and the meeting: + +- *Pre-wire* — when Craig has a proposal, a decision to land, or even a pointed question, the prep should surface who to socialize it with beforehand. Pre-wiring turns the meeting from a debate into a confirmation; the goal is *no surprises + agreement*, manufactured in advance. The moves, scaled to the meeting: nail the *key ask* (the decision you actually want — "just an update" rarely is); brief the most pivotal person first (they flag problems and tip you to the others' hot buttons); for a real briefing, request the attendees' time a week or two ahead; and handle every likely objection before it surfaces (name a known disagreement yourself so it isn't a surprise in the room). At peer level it's lighter — the *casual mention*: float it into an existing relaxed conversation with a friendly peer ("not floating this formally yet, but what do you think?"), and decide up front how much you'll change to win their support. The full method — the four framing points and eight steps — is in the [[file:meeting-prep.pre-wire.org][pre-wire reference]] beside this workflow. +- *Schedule the prep* — add a 15 minutes of pre-work as an actual calendar block, not just an intention. If it isn't scheduled, the urgent eats it. + +** Phase 4 — Review with Craig + +Present the draft and walk the judgment-dependent sections with him: does the "what they want" read match his sense of the other side; are the hold positions right; is there data he expects to be pressed on that's missing; anything about the relationship or politics the written context doesn't capture. Capture his spoken context back into the doc (a dated note or an inline edit) so the rationale survives. Iterate until he's confident walking in. + +** Phase 5 — Wire into the day's prep + +If the meeting falls on a day that has (or will have) a daily-prep doc, link the prep doc from that day's prep — under the meeting's entry in Day's Priorities or the Meetings/Work-Blocks block. (The daily-prep workflow does the reverse-direction catch: when daily-prep is built later and finds an existing =working/-call-prep/=, it links it. This phase is the forward direction, for when the prep doc is built first.) + +** Phase 6 — Post-meeting: close the loop + +After the meeting: + +1. *Capture notes/transcript summary* into the doc's "Notes & next steps" section (or hand off to =process-meeting-transcript.org= if it was recorded). If a transcript was taken, link it. +2. *Extract action items* — read the notes/transcript and file every commitment, deliverable, and decision as a =todo.org= task (or a dated update to an existing one). This step is not optional: a meeting that produces commitments and no tasks is a half-done workflow. Cross-check against existing tasks so you update rather than duplicate. +3. *File the artifacts* — when the thread is done, the working-files convention takes over: rename the prep doc + artifacts flat into the project's assets home and delete the working dir. A recurring thread (a partner Craig meets repeatedly) can keep its =working/-call-prep/= alive across meetings instead. + +* Principles to Follow + +- *Ground, don't invent.* Every claim about what the other side wants, what's been decided, or what the data shows traces to a source — a prior transcript, a task, a ticket. Where there's no ground, name the gap for Craig to fill rather than guessing. +- *Summarize and link; don't rebuild.* The prep doc points at the detailed context (transcripts, the data-characterization task) and distills the decision-useful version. It is not a second copy of the analysis. +- *The "their questions + your answers" section is the rehearsal.* Spend the most effort there. Walking in with pre-written one-line answers to the likely questions is what the prep buys. +- *Attending → contributing.* The Manager Tools reframe at the center of meeting prep: don't fill a seat, decide the contribution and make it. Every prep doc should answer "what's Craig's active role here?" +- *Read the invite before you prep.* Who / why / timing / objective tells you what the meeting really is and how hard to prep; a vague title often hides a contentious meeting. "He was invited" isn't a reason to attend. +- *Pre-wire what matters.* Socialize a proposal or position with attendees before the meeting; a confirmation beats a debate. +- *State locked decisions, don't relitigate them.* Pulling the already-made decisions into their own section keeps the meeting from reopening settled questions. +- *Close the loop every time.* A meeting that produces commitments and no =todo.org= tasks is a half-done workflow. Phase 6's action-item extraction is the back half, not an afterthought. +- *One discoverable place.* All of a meeting's prep + record lives in its =working/-call-prep/= dir until filed, then flat in assets. No scattering. + +* Living Document + +Update this workflow as the prep practice sharpens. The Manager Tools research is folded in (the gate in Phase 0, the get-all-information framing in Phase 1, the objective + attending-to-contributing reframe in Phase 3, the full pre-wire method + schedule-the-block in Phase 3.5, and the principles). The prewire, staff-meeting, and Sunday-Evening-Planning casts are mined. Two candidates this surfaced, neither built yet: a *staff-meeting prep variant* for a recurring engineering weekly (prep-to-run, from the "How to Run Your Staff Meeting" methodology), and a *weekly-planning routine* (Sunday Evening Planning), distinct from this workflow. + +** Updates and Learnings + +*** 2026-06-10: Promoted to a general template +Promoted from a project-only workflow into a rulesets template. The project-specific references (transcript-home path, issue tracker, knowledge file, the worked-example doc) were generalized to project-neutral terms so any project's =.ai/= picks it up. Phase 6 (post-meeting action-item extraction) is the load-bearing back half — it exists because the absence of exactly that step is what leaves a meeting's committed deliverables unfiled. diff --git a/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.pre-wire.org b/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.pre-wire.org new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6a156c0 --- /dev/null +++ b/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.pre-wire.org @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +#+TITLE: Meeting-Prep — Pre-Wire Method (supporting doc) +#+AUTHOR: Craig Jennings & Claude +#+DATE: 2026-06-10 + +Supporting document for the [[file:meeting-prep.org][meeting-prep workflow]]'s Phase 3.5. The workflow carries the condensed, in-flow version of pre-wiring; this file is the full Manager Tools method, kept beside the workflow (same name + =.pre-wire= suffix) so it travels with the workflow. Source casts: "How to Prewire a Meeting" (2007) and "Peer Prewire" (2015). + +Pre-wire = talking to the people you'll present to *before* the meeting, so the meeting itself is a confirmation rather than a debate. The goal phrase is a *slam dunk* = no surprises + agreement — and that's manufactured in advance, not in the room. The classic venue is a skip-level briefing (presenting to your boss's boss, usually at her staff meeting), but the principle applies to any meeting where you need multiple people to agree. + +* Four framing points + +1. *Know your time limit.* Ask "how much time do I have?" *first* — before you fix the purpose, because if you build a 30-minute brief for a 10-minute slot you've shot yourself in the foot. Five to fifteen minutes is normal at senior levels; a short slot is not an insult. +2. *Know the room layout.* You'll likely be presenting on your feet; eliminate the trip hazards and the scramble. The frame: eliminate problems rather than create excellence. +3. *One slide per five minutes.* Fifteen minutes means three slides, title included. If you can't talk for five minutes without the slide, you don't know the material. Distilling to this forces the value judgments that being-in-the-room is supposed to demonstrate. +4. *Go for a slam dunk.* The feeling of a slam dunk happens at the end of the presentation, but the slam dunk itself is built entirely in the pre-wire. + +* Eight steps + +1. *Know your key ask* — the decision or question you actually want answered (a budget number, a restructure, a priority change). "They just want an update" is the most misleading thing you'll be told; there's a decision in play, or they'd have asked for an email. +2. *Draft your slides* — a draft only, after the key ask is clear. The deck is the skeleton, not the body of persuasion. +3. *Brief your boss first* — she's most willing to give real feedback and to catch a glaring error, and she can tell you each other attendee's hot buttons. Don't try to impress her here; impress her when her boss says "slam dunk." +4. *Request time from the other attendees* — a week or two ahead, ask for ~30 minutes (you'll use it more often than you expect). This is you asking for their time, not their attendance. +5. *Brief those attendees* — walk them through it, fold in their input, aim for *agreement*, not just persuasion. Including their thinking is what buys their support in the room. +6. *Re-brief your boss* — with the assimilated input, so the two of you are aligned on the key message before the meeting. +7. *Finalize your slides* — only now, after all the input. This is when you actually have a presentation. +8. *Rehearse* — a real dress rehearsal (out loud, full sentences, in the room if you can), not running the slides in your head. The step almost everyone skips. + +Closeout: the two conditions for a slam dunk are *no surprises* and *agreement*. Handle every likely objection before it surfaces — name a known disagreement yourself ("it'll be no surprise that Robert sees this differently; here's where he lands and why we're okay with it") so it can't blindside you. + +* Peer pre-wire (the lighter form) + +Same technique applied sideways, to peers, not just up the chain. + +1. *Don't go to your boss first.* Taking an unvetted idea straight to the boss and getting it shot down — repeatedly — trains the boss to ignore your ideas. "An idea is a dangerous thing if it's the only one you have." +2. *Use the casual mention.* Slip the idea into an existing relaxed conversation with a friendly, open-minded peer — "I'm not floating this formally yet, but what do you think?" It's a discussion of the idea sitting *between* you, not a sales pitch and not a defense. +3. *Decide up front how much you'll change.* Be willing to give up a lot — even 90% — to get the core implemented. Including others' input is what earns their support; half a loaf beats none. + +Pre-wire is not "shopping an idea" — shopping wants a buy on an unchanging idea; pre-wire goes in willing to modify. A calibration trick: before you talk to people, predict each person's reaction on a grid, then compare to what they actually say. A big gap means you need a better read on how to work with them. diff --git a/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/INDEX.org b/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/INDEX.org index c03c92f..218709f 100644 --- a/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/INDEX.org +++ b/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/INDEX.org @@ -33,6 +33,9 @@ This index must list every =.org= file in =.ai/workflows/= except this one and e - =daily-prep.org= — prep brief for the next workday. Two modes: full-prep (default) or standup-only. - Full-prep triggers: "let's prep for tomorrow", "daily prep" - Standup-only triggers: "what's my standup report", "let's do the daily standup report", "give me the standup brief" +- =meeting-prep.org= — deep prep doc for one specific upcoming meeting that warrants more than a glance: decode the invite (who/why/timing/objective), gather grounded context, draft the eight-section prep, pre-wire and schedule the prep block, review with Craig, wire into the day's daily-prep, and close the loop post-meeting by extracting action items into =todo.org=. The per-meeting companion to =daily-prep.org='s whole-day brief. + - Triggers: "let's prep for the meeting", "prep me for the call with ", "build a prep doc for ", "let's run the meeting-prep workflow", "meeting prep", "let's prep the call" + - Supporting doc: =meeting-prep.pre-wire.org= (the full Manager Tools pre-wire method, used by Phase 3.5). Not independently triggerable. - =triage-intake.org= — on-demand triage *engine*: a source-agnostic sweep that loads source plugins, classifies what's new since last check (Action / FYI / Noise-keep / Noise-trash), produces one synthesized summary, and offers to run the routine actions. Carries no sources of its own — every source comes from a =triage-intake..org= plugin globbed from both =.ai/workflows/= (general) and =.ai/project-workflows/= (project-specific). Lighter scope than =daily-prep.org='s triage section. - Triggers: "do a triage intake", "triage intake", "what's new?", "what's new since I last checked", "do a sweep", "check email, calendar, and PRs" - Source adapters: =triage-intake.*.org= (=personal-gmail=, =personal-calendar=, =cmail=, =github-prs= ship general; projects add their own). Not independently triggerable — the engine loads them; "run the triage-intake workflow" always routes to the engine, never a plugin. diff --git a/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org b/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org index fcc983d..327e519 100644 --- a/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org +++ b/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org @@ -194,11 +194,11 @@ Capture the meeting list with what's known about each (time, owner, official age Beyond today, scan the next 5 days from the Phase A forward window — read the calendar today *and the next five days*, reading it rather than glancing. For each meeting in that window, do a quick read (who's invited and who accepted, why it's being held, the timing, the objective) and surface three buckets at the final review: -1. *Meetings that need prep.* A substantive upcoming meeting — an external partner, a negotiation, a review of specific work or data, a first call with someone — that has no =working/-call-prep/= doc yet. Offer to run the meeting-prep workflow where the project has one, or add a prep task. Some meetings take more than five minutes to prepare; catching them several days out is the whole point of looking ahead. +1. *Meetings that need prep.* A substantive upcoming meeting — an external partner, a negotiation, a review of specific work or data, a first call with someone — that has no =working/-call-prep/= doc yet. Offer to run the [[file:meeting-prep.org][meeting-prep workflow]], or add a prep task. Some meetings take more than five minutes to prepare; catching them several days out is the whole point of looking ahead. 2. *Traps.* A time-zone mismatch on a travel day, a double-booking, a talk-heavy meeting that will overrun into the next, a recurring meeting that isn't needed this cycle. 3. *Focus blocks to protect.* Open mornings or afternoons in the window worth blocking now for big work, before they get booked over. -This is a scan-and-flag pass, not a full prep — the deep prep for any one meeting is the meeting-prep workflow's job where one exists. Keep it to the three buckets and surface them in =* Heads-up= (Phase 7) or as forward tasks / Anchor Tasks; don't add a new prep-doc section. +This is a scan-and-flag pass, not a full prep — the deep prep for any one meeting is the [[file:meeting-prep.org][meeting-prep workflow]]'s job. Keep it to the three buckets and surface them in =* Heads-up= (Phase 7) or as forward tasks / Anchor Tasks; don't add a new prep-doc section. ** Phase 2: Planned vs. Actual Review @@ -612,4 +612,4 @@ Phase 3's inline source scans — sub-steps 3b (email), 3c (mark-read), 3d (Slac Craig's call. The prep doc is now *born* in =daily-prep/YYYY-MM-DD-daily-prep.org= and never moves; the dated files accumulate there as both working location and archive. A single stable symlink at the project root — =daily-prep.org= — points at the current day's file, repointed each prep run with =ln -sf=. Replaces the prior model where the doc was born in =inbox/YYYY-MM-DD-daily-prep.org=, yesterday's stayed in =inbox/=, and older docs were =mv='d into the =daily-prep/= archive (old Phase 8). Consumers resolve the root symlink instead of computing a dated filename or searching =inbox/=: the Emacs opener =C-c p d= (=cj/open-project-daily-prep=, repointed from =inbox/today-prep.org= to =daily-prep.org= — handoff filed to the =.emacs.d= project 2026-06-01), next-day Phase 2, and the standup lookback (Phase A step 5, which now globs =daily-prep/= and takes the file before the symlink's target). Touchpoints updated: Phase A step 5 + slim-Phase-A step 2 (lookback), standup-only "Where the brief lands," Phase 8 (rewritten as "Repoint the Current-Day Symlink"). Cross-workflow: =triage-intake.org='s sentinel-anchor fallback dropped its =inbox/= prep-doc path. (=wrap-it-up.org= was left as-is — its =inbox/= references are about =lint-followups.org= routing, not the prep doc, so they stay correct.) Migration is one-time per project: move existing =inbox/*-daily-prep.org= into =daily-prep/= and create the root symlink at the most recent. *** 2026-06-10: Manager Tools prep additions — 5-day look-ahead, daily big-ball, decline gate -Three additions folded in from the Manager Tools / Career Tools casts on preparing-for-your-day and meeting prep. None adds a new prep-doc section (the fixed-section rule holds — the look-ahead feeds Heads-up / Anchor Tasks). (1) *5-Day Look-Ahead* — Phase A widens the calendar fetch from the prep day to the prep day plus the next 5 days, and a new Phase 1 sub-section scans that forward window for three buckets: meetings that need prep, traps (time-zone mismatch, double-booking, overrun, an unneeded recurring meeting), and focus blocks to protect. A scan-and-flag pass, not full prep. (2) *Daily big-ball* — Phase 3 sub-step 3a item 5 pulls one important-but-not-urgent (Quadrant-2) task per day and slates a ~15-minute chunk, since strategic work only lands when broken into small daily pieces. (3) *Decline gate* — Phase 1 item 5 reframes "what Craig needs" from attending to contributing, and adds a send-regrets gate: a meeting with no objective and no contribution is a decline candidate for Craig's call at review. The look-ahead's meeting-prep references are conditional ("where the project has one") because meeting-prep is currently a project-only workflow, not a template. +Three additions folded in from the Manager Tools / Career Tools casts on preparing-for-your-day and meeting prep. None adds a new prep-doc section (the fixed-section rule holds — the look-ahead feeds Heads-up / Anchor Tasks). (1) *5-Day Look-Ahead* — Phase A widens the calendar fetch from the prep day to the prep day plus the next 5 days, and a new Phase 1 sub-section scans that forward window for three buckets: meetings that need prep, traps (time-zone mismatch, double-booking, overrun, an unneeded recurring meeting), and focus blocks to protect. A scan-and-flag pass, not full prep. (2) *Daily big-ball* — Phase 3 sub-step 3a item 5 pulls one important-but-not-urgent (Quadrant-2) task per day and slates a ~15-minute chunk, since strategic work only lands when broken into small daily pieces. (3) *Decline gate* — Phase 1 item 5 reframes "what Craig needs" from attending to contributing, and adds a send-regrets gate: a meeting with no objective and no contribution is a decline candidate for Craig's call at review. The look-ahead's meeting-prep references link directly to =meeting-prep.org= (promoted to a template 2026-06-10). diff --git a/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.org b/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.org new file mode 100644 index 0000000..162ae30 --- /dev/null +++ b/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.org @@ -0,0 +1,136 @@ +#+TITLE: Meeting-Prep Workflow +#+AUTHOR: Craig Jennings & Claude +#+DATE: 2026-06-10 + +* Overview + +Build a focused prep doc for a specific upcoming meeting so Craig walks in knowing what the meeting is, what the other side wants, what he wants to settle, the positions he can state without relitigating, and the data he might be asked about. The doc lives in =working/-call-prep/= during the lead-up and stays as the meeting's record afterward (notes + the action items it produced). + +This is the per-meeting companion to =daily-prep.org=. Daily-prep is morning rounds across the whole day; meeting-prep is the deep prep for one meeting that warrants it. The two are wired: daily-prep links to an existing call-prep doc when the prep day has one, and meeting-prep links forward into the day's daily-prep when the meeting falls on a prepped day. + +* Problem We're Solving + +High-stakes or substance-heavy meetings go better with preparation, and Craig prefers detailed prep before them. Without a formal workflow the prep is ad hoc: it gets done from memory, the relevant prior context (past calls, the data under discussion, decisions already locked) isn't pulled together, and the same questions get re-derived live. Worse, the action items a meeting produces often never get captured — the gap that appears when a filed transcript carries committed deliverables that never become tasks. + +A repeatable workflow makes the prep thorough and consistent, keeps every prep artifact in one discoverable place, and closes the loop by folding the meeting's action items back into =todo.org=. + +* Exit Criteria + +The prep is done when: + +1. A prep doc exists at =working/-call-prep/-.org= with the section set below filled to the extent the available context allows. +2. Every section that can be grounded in real context (calendar, prior transcripts, =todo.org=, the project's issue tracker, the project's notes) is grounded — not invented. Gaps Craig must fill are named explicitly rather than guessed. +3. Craig has reviewed it and confirmed nothing's missing (his read of the other side's asks, his hold positions, the data he expects to be pressed on). +4. If the meeting falls on a day with a daily-prep doc, the prep doc is linked from that day's prep. + +Post-meeting, the loop is closed when the meeting's action items have been extracted into =todo.org= (see Phase 6). + +* When to Use This Workflow + +Trigger when a specific meeting warrants more than a glance: + +- Craig says "let's prep for the meeting", "prep me for the call with ", "build a prep doc for ", "let's run the meeting-prep workflow". +- Daily-prep surfaces a prep-day meeting that has real substance (an external partner, a negotiation, a review of specific data/work, a first call with someone) and no prep doc yet — offer to run this. + +Don't use it for routine recurring ceremonies (standup, iteration review) unless Craig is presenting something specific. Those are covered by the daily-prep standup brief and the retro-prep step. + +Distinct from: +- =daily-prep.org= — the whole-day brief; meeting-prep is one meeting deep. +- =process-meeting-transcript.org= — the *post*-meeting record (recording → transcript → archive). Meeting-prep's Phase 6 hands off to it / consumes its output for action-item extraction. + +* Approach: How We Work Together + +** Phase 0 — Identify the meeting and confirm it warrants prep + +Establish which meeting and pull its calendar event: + +#+begin_src text +mcp__google-calendar__list-events account="work" (and/or "personal"), the day in question +#+end_src + +From the event capture: title, date/time (render in PT/CT/ET per Craig's three-timezone convention when sharing times), duration, organizer, attendee list with response status, location/medium (conferenceData), and any agenda link in the description. If the meeting clearly doesn't warrant a full prep doc (a routine ceremony, a quick sync), say so and offer the lighter touch instead. + +*Read the meeting, and gate it.* For most of Craig's meetings the title and agenda are already known, so the heavy "decode an ambiguous invite" pass isn't needed here — the four-question diagnostic below lives better in the *daily-prep* calendar scan, as a quick read of each upcoming meeting. What this phase always applies is the gate: *is there a purpose here for Craig?* "He was invited" is not, by itself, a reason to attend — if there's no objective for him and no contribution to make, the right output is "decline / send regrets," not a prep doc. + +For a genuinely ambiguous invite (vague title, no agenda, not a standing meeting), run the full four-question decode (Manager Tools, "Meeting Preparation Questions"): + +1. *Who is invited, and who accepted?* Tells you the importance, the atmosphere, and how to behave. More people — or more senior people — means more serious / higher-impact. Counter-signal: the more benign or vague the title, the more likely the meeting is contentious, because vagueness is message-control and good news rarely gets controlled. +2. *Why is it being held?* The synchronous need an email couldn't carry — explanation, cooperation, coordination, orientation, contention, or celebration. +3. *What's the timing?* Less notice skews negative/urgent: under 24h is big and usually bad; more than a week out is usually benign; 24h–1 week is the hardest to read, so go by the org's norms. +4. *What's the objective?* Three layers — the *spoken* objective (what's broadcast), the *unspoken* objective (the real reason, inferred from who/why/timing), and *your* objective (what you'll get out of it). + +** Phase 1 — Gather context (don't re-derive what's already written) + +Manager Tools' first recommendation is "get all the available information" — agenda, the full invitee/attendee list (and who accepted), and the supporting materials. Pull together everything that bears on the meeting, in parallel where possible: + +- *Agenda + attendee list + supporting docs* — if they weren't circulated, that's a gap to note (and, for a real meeting, a thing Craig could politely ask the convener for). The who-accepted list feeds the "who" question above. +- *Prior related meetings* — search the project's transcript home (wherever recordings/transcripts are filed, e.g. an =assets/= dir) for earlier calls with the same people or on the same topic. Read the relevant ones; cite them in the prep as "background, don't re-derive." +- *Related =todo.org= tasks* — the open tasks that touch this meeting's topic (the data under review, the relationship, the deliverable). These carry the decisions already made and the open questions. +- *Issue-tracker tickets* — any ticket in the project's tracker that the meeting is about (status, body, recent comments). +- *Prior prep docs* — an earlier =working/-call-prep/= for the same thread (e.g. a recurring partner). +- *Project knowledge* — the project's notes / knowledge files (=notes.org=, or a project =knowledge.org=) sections that frame the relationship or strategy. + +The goal of this phase is that the prep doc *summarizes and points at* existing context rather than rebuilding it. Link to the source; don't paste it. + +** Phase 2 — Set up the working dir + +Per the working-files convention, create =working/-call-prep/= and write the prep doc as =-.org= inside it. The slug names the meeting/thread (=vendor-review=, =partner-intro=, =board-update=), not a snapshot date. Supporting artifacts (a data summary, a draft Craig will bring, a diagram) live in the same dir. Add or update the inbound link in the relevant =todo.org= task so future sessions find it. + +** Phase 3 — Draft the prep doc + +Use this section set: + +1. *Header* — one block: meeting name, date + time, medium/location, organizer, attendees (who's actually in the room), tracker/doc links, and a "background — don't re-derive" line pointing at the prior transcripts and the source task. +2. *What this meeting is* — one short paragraph framing it: who called it, why, and the natural shape (who walks whom through what). +3. *What they want out of it (the objective read)* — the other side's goals, in three layers: the *spoken* objective (what the invite/agenda broadcasts), the *unspoken* objective (the real reason, inferred from who/why/timing), and ordered by what they'll lead with. Grounded in who they are and prior context, not guessed. +4. *Questions they'll probably ask (and your one-line answers)* — anticipate the questions and pre-write Craig's crisp answer to each. This is the highest-value section: it's the rehearsal. +5. *Craig's objective and contribution* — the heart of the prep, and the Manager Tools reframe: not "attend" but "contribute." What does Craig want to *achieve*, and what's the active role he'll play — the decisions to land, the asks to make, the positions to state, the proposal to make, or (for a listen-heavy meeting) the specific value he'll add. Name anything worth *pre-wiring* (socializing with an attendee beforehand so it lands and gets supported). +6. *Positions already locked* — decisions made in prior sessions so Craig can *state* them, not relitigate. Pull these from the related tasks and transcripts. +7. *Relevant data at a glance* — the tables/figures Craig might be pressed on (e.g. the dataset breakdown), summarized to render width per the org-table standard (and no more than 200 columns, with cells becoming multi-line cells), with a link to the full detail. +8. *Notes & next steps (fill during / after)* — left open for the meeting itself. + +Not every meeting needs all eight. A first intro call may have no "positions locked" or "data" section; a data review leans heavily on them. Include the sections the meeting actually has; don't pad. + +** Phase 3.5 — Pre-wire and schedule the prep block + +Two Manager Tools habits that sit between drafting and the meeting: + +- *Pre-wire* — when Craig has a proposal, a decision to land, or even a pointed question, the prep should surface who to socialize it with beforehand. Pre-wiring turns the meeting from a debate into a confirmation; the goal is *no surprises + agreement*, manufactured in advance. The moves, scaled to the meeting: nail the *key ask* (the decision you actually want — "just an update" rarely is); brief the most pivotal person first (they flag problems and tip you to the others' hot buttons); for a real briefing, request the attendees' time a week or two ahead; and handle every likely objection before it surfaces (name a known disagreement yourself so it isn't a surprise in the room). At peer level it's lighter — the *casual mention*: float it into an existing relaxed conversation with a friendly peer ("not floating this formally yet, but what do you think?"), and decide up front how much you'll change to win their support. The full method — the four framing points and eight steps — is in the [[file:meeting-prep.pre-wire.org][pre-wire reference]] beside this workflow. +- *Schedule the prep* — add a 15 minutes of pre-work as an actual calendar block, not just an intention. If it isn't scheduled, the urgent eats it. + +** Phase 4 — Review with Craig + +Present the draft and walk the judgment-dependent sections with him: does the "what they want" read match his sense of the other side; are the hold positions right; is there data he expects to be pressed on that's missing; anything about the relationship or politics the written context doesn't capture. Capture his spoken context back into the doc (a dated note or an inline edit) so the rationale survives. Iterate until he's confident walking in. + +** Phase 5 — Wire into the day's prep + +If the meeting falls on a day that has (or will have) a daily-prep doc, link the prep doc from that day's prep — under the meeting's entry in Day's Priorities or the Meetings/Work-Blocks block. (The daily-prep workflow does the reverse-direction catch: when daily-prep is built later and finds an existing =working/-call-prep/=, it links it. This phase is the forward direction, for when the prep doc is built first.) + +** Phase 6 — Post-meeting: close the loop + +After the meeting: + +1. *Capture notes/transcript summary* into the doc's "Notes & next steps" section (or hand off to =process-meeting-transcript.org= if it was recorded). If a transcript was taken, link it. +2. *Extract action items* — read the notes/transcript and file every commitment, deliverable, and decision as a =todo.org= task (or a dated update to an existing one). This step is not optional: a meeting that produces commitments and no tasks is a half-done workflow. Cross-check against existing tasks so you update rather than duplicate. +3. *File the artifacts* — when the thread is done, the working-files convention takes over: rename the prep doc + artifacts flat into the project's assets home and delete the working dir. A recurring thread (a partner Craig meets repeatedly) can keep its =working/-call-prep/= alive across meetings instead. + +* Principles to Follow + +- *Ground, don't invent.* Every claim about what the other side wants, what's been decided, or what the data shows traces to a source — a prior transcript, a task, a ticket. Where there's no ground, name the gap for Craig to fill rather than guessing. +- *Summarize and link; don't rebuild.* The prep doc points at the detailed context (transcripts, the data-characterization task) and distills the decision-useful version. It is not a second copy of the analysis. +- *The "their questions + your answers" section is the rehearsal.* Spend the most effort there. Walking in with pre-written one-line answers to the likely questions is what the prep buys. +- *Attending → contributing.* The Manager Tools reframe at the center of meeting prep: don't fill a seat, decide the contribution and make it. Every prep doc should answer "what's Craig's active role here?" +- *Read the invite before you prep.* Who / why / timing / objective tells you what the meeting really is and how hard to prep; a vague title often hides a contentious meeting. "He was invited" isn't a reason to attend. +- *Pre-wire what matters.* Socialize a proposal or position with attendees before the meeting; a confirmation beats a debate. +- *State locked decisions, don't relitigate them.* Pulling the already-made decisions into their own section keeps the meeting from reopening settled questions. +- *Close the loop every time.* A meeting that produces commitments and no =todo.org= tasks is a half-done workflow. Phase 6's action-item extraction is the back half, not an afterthought. +- *One discoverable place.* All of a meeting's prep + record lives in its =working/-call-prep/= dir until filed, then flat in assets. No scattering. + +* Living Document + +Update this workflow as the prep practice sharpens. The Manager Tools research is folded in (the gate in Phase 0, the get-all-information framing in Phase 1, the objective + attending-to-contributing reframe in Phase 3, the full pre-wire method + schedule-the-block in Phase 3.5, and the principles). The prewire, staff-meeting, and Sunday-Evening-Planning casts are mined. Two candidates this surfaced, neither built yet: a *staff-meeting prep variant* for a recurring engineering weekly (prep-to-run, from the "How to Run Your Staff Meeting" methodology), and a *weekly-planning routine* (Sunday Evening Planning), distinct from this workflow. + +** Updates and Learnings + +*** 2026-06-10: Promoted to a general template +Promoted from a project-only workflow into a rulesets template. The project-specific references (transcript-home path, issue tracker, knowledge file, the worked-example doc) were generalized to project-neutral terms so any project's =.ai/= picks it up. Phase 6 (post-meeting action-item extraction) is the load-bearing back half — it exists because the absence of exactly that step is what leaves a meeting's committed deliverables unfiled. diff --git a/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.pre-wire.org b/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.pre-wire.org new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6a156c0 --- /dev/null +++ b/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/meeting-prep.pre-wire.org @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +#+TITLE: Meeting-Prep — Pre-Wire Method (supporting doc) +#+AUTHOR: Craig Jennings & Claude +#+DATE: 2026-06-10 + +Supporting document for the [[file:meeting-prep.org][meeting-prep workflow]]'s Phase 3.5. The workflow carries the condensed, in-flow version of pre-wiring; this file is the full Manager Tools method, kept beside the workflow (same name + =.pre-wire= suffix) so it travels with the workflow. Source casts: "How to Prewire a Meeting" (2007) and "Peer Prewire" (2015). + +Pre-wire = talking to the people you'll present to *before* the meeting, so the meeting itself is a confirmation rather than a debate. The goal phrase is a *slam dunk* = no surprises + agreement — and that's manufactured in advance, not in the room. The classic venue is a skip-level briefing (presenting to your boss's boss, usually at her staff meeting), but the principle applies to any meeting where you need multiple people to agree. + +* Four framing points + +1. *Know your time limit.* Ask "how much time do I have?" *first* — before you fix the purpose, because if you build a 30-minute brief for a 10-minute slot you've shot yourself in the foot. Five to fifteen minutes is normal at senior levels; a short slot is not an insult. +2. *Know the room layout.* You'll likely be presenting on your feet; eliminate the trip hazards and the scramble. The frame: eliminate problems rather than create excellence. +3. *One slide per five minutes.* Fifteen minutes means three slides, title included. If you can't talk for five minutes without the slide, you don't know the material. Distilling to this forces the value judgments that being-in-the-room is supposed to demonstrate. +4. *Go for a slam dunk.* The feeling of a slam dunk happens at the end of the presentation, but the slam dunk itself is built entirely in the pre-wire. + +* Eight steps + +1. *Know your key ask* — the decision or question you actually want answered (a budget number, a restructure, a priority change). "They just want an update" is the most misleading thing you'll be told; there's a decision in play, or they'd have asked for an email. +2. *Draft your slides* — a draft only, after the key ask is clear. The deck is the skeleton, not the body of persuasion. +3. *Brief your boss first* — she's most willing to give real feedback and to catch a glaring error, and she can tell you each other attendee's hot buttons. Don't try to impress her here; impress her when her boss says "slam dunk." +4. *Request time from the other attendees* — a week or two ahead, ask for ~30 minutes (you'll use it more often than you expect). This is you asking for their time, not their attendance. +5. *Brief those attendees* — walk them through it, fold in their input, aim for *agreement*, not just persuasion. Including their thinking is what buys their support in the room. +6. *Re-brief your boss* — with the assimilated input, so the two of you are aligned on the key message before the meeting. +7. *Finalize your slides* — only now, after all the input. This is when you actually have a presentation. +8. *Rehearse* — a real dress rehearsal (out loud, full sentences, in the room if you can), not running the slides in your head. The step almost everyone skips. + +Closeout: the two conditions for a slam dunk are *no surprises* and *agreement*. Handle every likely objection before it surfaces — name a known disagreement yourself ("it'll be no surprise that Robert sees this differently; here's where he lands and why we're okay with it") so it can't blindside you. + +* Peer pre-wire (the lighter form) + +Same technique applied sideways, to peers, not just up the chain. + +1. *Don't go to your boss first.* Taking an unvetted idea straight to the boss and getting it shot down — repeatedly — trains the boss to ignore your ideas. "An idea is a dangerous thing if it's the only one you have." +2. *Use the casual mention.* Slip the idea into an existing relaxed conversation with a friendly, open-minded peer — "I'm not floating this formally yet, but what do you think?" It's a discussion of the idea sitting *between* you, not a sales pitch and not a defense. +3. *Decide up front how much you'll change.* Be willing to give up a lot — even 90% — to get the core implemented. Including others' input is what earns their support; half a loaf beats none. + +Pre-wire is not "shopping an idea" — shopping wants a buy on an unchanging idea; pre-wire goes in willing to modify. A calibration trick: before you talk to people, predict each person's reaction on a grid, then compare to what they actually say. A big gap means you need a better read on how to work with them. -- cgit v1.2.3