Monthly Business Review

A single document. Not a deck. Each function head writes one page max — the metrics that matter, what the numbers are doing, why, and what they need from the room. No one walks into the room without having read it.

First fifteen minutes, no one talks. Everyone reads the packet (or re-reads it) and writes their questions and comments directly here and make specific suggestions inside the doc. This is the Bezos move — and it's the single most important change you can make.

Each leader: green / yellow / red on each KR they own. One sentence each. No explanation unless red. Reds drop into the issues list.

Walk the input metrics, not just the outputs. The CFO or CoS leads. Anything off-trend gets two minutes — what it means, what to investigate. Anything that needs a real decision drops to the issues list.

The bulk of the meeting. Take the 2–3 biggest items from the reds and metric drift. For each: identify what's actually happening, discuss, decide. Owner and deadline assigned in the room.

Highlight what happened, indicating clearly whether the team is moving in a good direction. Identify the main questions and topics discussed during this session, the overall status of work based on OKR signals, metrics indicating big wins, and any metrics reflecting slow progress or remaining unchanged from previous sessions. Finally, for any issues mentioned, provide initial approaches, estimated effort, and at least one or two actionable steps to resolve them.

Action items from today, plus a check on action items from last month's review. What got done, what didn't, why.

Each person rates the meeting 1–8. Anything under 6 gets a sentence on what to fix next time.

A single document. Not a deck. Each function head writes one page max — the metrics that matter, what the numbers are doing, why, and what they need from the room. No one walks into the room without having read it.

First fifteen minutes, no one talks. Everyone reads the packet (or re-reads it) and writes their questions and comments directly here and make specific suggestions inside the doc. This is the Bezos move — and it's the single most important change you can make.

Each leader: green / yellow / red on each KR they own. One sentence each. No explanation unless red. Reds drop into the issues list.

Walk the input metrics, not just the outputs. The CFO or CoS leads. Anything off-trend gets two minutes — what it means, what to investigate. Anything that needs a real decision drops to the issues list.

The bulk of the meeting. Take the 2–3 biggest items from the reds and metric drift. For each: identify what's actually happening, discuss, decide. Owner and deadline assigned in the room.

Highlight what happened, indicating clearly whether the team is moving in a good direction. Identify the main questions and topics discussed during this session, the overall status of work based on OKR signals, metrics indicating big wins, and any metrics reflecting slow progress or remaining unchanged from previous sessions. Finally, for any issues mentioned, provide initial approaches, estimated effort, and at least one or two actionable steps to resolve them.

Action items from today, plus a check on action items from last month's review. What got done, what didn't, why.

Each person rates the meeting 1–8. Anything under 6 gets a sentence on what to fix next time.

A single document. Not a deck. Each function head writes one page max — the metrics that matter, what the numbers are doing, why, and what they need from the room. No one walks into the room without having read it.

First fifteen minutes, no one talks. Everyone reads the packet (or re-reads it) and writes their questions and comments directly here and make specific suggestions inside the doc. This is the Bezos move — and it's the single most important change you can make.

Each leader: green / yellow / red on each KR they own. One sentence each. No explanation unless red. Reds drop into the issues list.

Walk the input metrics, not just the outputs. The CFO or CoS leads. Anything off-trend gets two minutes — what it means, what to investigate. Anything that needs a real decision drops to the issues list.

The bulk of the meeting. Take the 2–3 biggest items from the reds and metric drift. For each: identify what's actually happening, discuss, decide. Owner and deadline assigned in the room.

Action items from today, plus a check on action items from last month's review. What got done, what didn't, why.

Each person rates the meeting 1–8. Anything under 6 gets a sentence on what to fix next time.

The monthly business review is a 90-minute meeting on the [first/last] [day] of every month. The leadership team attends. Its job is to spot what's drifting before it becomes a quarter-killer, and decide what to do about it.

That's the whole job. Not status updates. Not round-robin presentations. Not a recap of the month. Spot drift, decide.

Here's how it works in practice.

Two days before the meeting, every function head writes a one-page pre-read — what your numbers are doing, why, and what you need from the room. The CFO compiles all of those into a single packet and sends it 48 hours before the meeting or each person upload their document inside Nova.

Everyone reads it before walking in.

The meeting itself opens with 15 minutes of silent reading. Yes, silent. Nobody talks.

Everyone re-reads the packet and writes their questions and comments directly into the doc. Then we walk OKR signal, then metrics, then we spend the bulk of the meeting on the 2-3 issues that actually matter. We close by logging action items and rating the meeting 1-10.

That's it. Same structure every month. Same time. Same place. The structure doesn't change.

If you're an attendee, your job in this meeting is in three places: the silent read (engage with the doc, write your real questions), the OKR signal if you own a KR, and the issues dive (if a topic is in your area, be ready to identify what's actually happening and commit to a path forward in the room).

Five rules. They're how we make the meeting work.

1. Pre-read or no participation. If you didn't write your page or read the packet, don't attend. We're holding this line. Without it, the rest is theater.

2. Inputs over outputs. When you write your page, focus on the metrics that predict next month, not the ones that summarize last month. Revenue is a result. Sales calls per rep is a cause. We want causes.

3. Status updates die in pre-read. If something doesn't need a decision from the room, it goes in the pre-read and stays there. The meeting is for what writing can't do — debate, decide, commit. If you find yourself wanting to "walk the team through" something, write it instead.

4. The biggest thing gets the most time. We don't give every function equal airtime. The issue that matters most this month gets 40 minutes. Everything else is supporting cast. This will feel uncomfortable the first few months. Push through it.

5. We score the meeting at the end. Two minutes. Each person rates 1–10. If we're under 8, we name one thing to fix next month. This is how the meeting stays sharp instead of slowly rotting back into theater.

What this means for you, week to week: