executive-summary

name	executive-summary
description	Executive summary authoring discipline covering Pyramid Principle (Minto SCQ), one-page architecture, decision-enabling structure, audience-aware compression, and the never-bury-bad-news rule. Applies answer-first sequencing, cognitive-economy writing, and named-owner recommendation framing to all outputs. Distinct from `domains/sales/skills/proposal-strategist` (persuasion-to-close focus) and `domains/business-support/skills/analytics-reporter` (data-narrative focus). Use when: converting a lengthy analysis or briefing into a board-ready one-page summary; structuring a decision memo for C-suite consumption; compressing a multi-team status report for executive review; or authoring a risk or incident summary that must be readable in under three minutes.
owner	Camille Renard (Executive Summary Specialist, domain persona)
tier	domain:business-support
scope_tags	["executive-summary","pyramid-principle","decision-support","one-page-summary","audience-compression"]
inspired_by	[{"source":"msitarzewski/agency-agents/support/support-executive-summary-generator.md@783f6a72bfd7f3135700ac273c619d92821b419a","license":"MIT","relationship":"structural_inspiration","authored_by":"ceo-orchestration framework","authored_at":"2026-05-07T00:00:00.000Z"},{"source":"affaan-m/ecc/skills/competitive-report-structure@81af40761939056ab3dc54732fd4f562a27309d0","license":"MIT","relationship":"structural_inspiration","authored_by":"ceo-orchestration framework","authored_at":"2026-07-07T00:00:00.000Z"}]
domain	business-support
priority	8
risk_class	low
stack	[]
context_budget_tokens	500
inactive_but_retained	true
repo_profile_binding	{"frontend":{"active":false,"priority":10},"engine":{"active":false,"priority":10},"fintech":{"active":false,"priority":10},"trading-readonly":{"active":false,"priority":10},"generic":{"active":false,"priority":10}}
activation_triggers	[]
paths	["**/memos/**","**/briefs/**","**/summaries/**"]
source	affaan-m/ecc@81af4076 skills/competitive-report-structure/
license	MIT

Executive Summary

Cardinal Rule

An executive summary that requires the reader to read the supporting document is not a summary; the summary IS the deliverable. Every output produced under this skill must be independently interpretable — context, decision, recommendation, and risk communicated completely within the one-page boundary, without reference to appendices or source material for the reader to reach a conclusion. All outputs are subject to the two-pass review gate (ADR-058).

Fail-Fast Rule

Stop and return a structured failure when any of the following is true:

• No decision or action is identified; the requester cannot articulate what a reader must decide or do after reading.
• The source material contains unresolved contradictions in key figures or scope that would require the reader to adjudicate ambiguity.
• The audience tier is unspecified and cannot be inferred from context, making compression level undefined.
• The one-page ceiling would be breached even with maximum compression, and no secondary format (two-page exception) has been authorised.
• Risk or bad-news content is present in the source but the requester has instructed that it be omitted or minimised.

Never produce a summary over an unresolved factual contradiction. Never omit material risk at requester direction.

When to Apply

Apply when: converting a detailed analysis, audit, or status report into a board-ready one-page summary; drafting a decision memo for a C-suite reader; compressing a multi-team update for executive review; authoring a risk, incident, or post-mortem summary; or preparing investor-facing business updates.

Do not apply to proposal documents with commercial intent (route to domains/sales/skills/proposal-strategist), data-narrative reports with exploratory findings (route to domains/business-support/skills/analytics-reporter), or financial board packs with multi-quarter P&L content (route to domains/finance-accounting/skills/financial-analyst).

Pyramid Principle

The Minto Situation-Complication-Question-Answer (SCQ) structure governs all outputs. The answer appears first, not last. The supporting argument exists to defend a conclusion already stated, not to build toward one.

Situation: the stable, agreed-upon context the reader already accepts. No new information; no controversy. One to two sentences.

Complication: the change, problem, or tension that makes the situation unstable and demands action. This is where urgency lives.

Question: the implicit question the complication raises in the reader's mind — what should we do? — stated explicitly only when the audience needs orientation.

Answer: the thesis — the recommendation, decision, or conclusion — stated in the opening sentence of the summary body. Every subsequent paragraph defends or contextualises the answer; nothing contradicts it.

Inverted-pyramid sequencing applies to every H2 section within the summary: the most important sentence is always first. Readers who stop after the first sentence of any section must still have understood the section's core contribution.

One-Page Architecture

The one-page ceiling is a hard constraint, not a guideline. Exceeding it signals that prioritisation has failed, not that the content is unusually complex.

Standard quadrant layout for a decision memo:

Quadrant	Content	Word budget
Decision required	One-sentence statement of what must be decided and by when	20–30
Context	SCQ Situation + Complication in compressed form	50–75
Options and recommendation	2–3 options with a named preferred option; rationale in one sentence per option	80–120
Risks and next step	Top 2 risks to the recommendation; single named next action with owner and date	50–75

Total target: 200–300 words. Hard ceiling: 350 words. Visual hierarchy: decision required at top; risks and next step at bottom. No footnotes, no appendix references, no jargon glossaries within the one-page body.

Decision-Enabling Structure

A summary without a decision is a report. The decision-enabling structure enforces six elements in every output:

1. Decision required — the specific choice the reader must make, framed as an action verb plus object: "Approve the Q3 budget reallocation", not "Regarding the budget".
2. Context — the minimum background needed to evaluate the decision; no more.
3. Options — two to four mutually exclusive paths; do-nothing is always an explicit option and is never tacitly assumed.
4. Recommendation — the preferred option, named explicitly, with a one-sentence rationale grounded in the decision criteria.
5. Risks — the top two risks to the recommended option, quantified or bounded where possible.
6. Next step — one concrete action, one named owner, one date.

Missing any element constitutes an incomplete output. "Further analysis required" is not a recommendation; "the team will review" is not a next step.

Audience-Aware Compression

Compression depth is calibrated to audience tier:

CEO / founder (60-second skim): decision statement + recommendation

• single risk + next step only. No options table. No supporting rationale unless the decision is reversible. Maximum 150 words.

Board / investor (5-minute read): full decision-enabling structure with options. Quantified risks. Named owners. Maximum 300 words. No jargon unexplained within the text.

Functional leader (10-minute detail): decision-enabling structure plus a three-to-five-row findings table. May include a secondary supporting section (methodology note or data provenance). Maximum 400 words, two-page exception permitted with prior authorisation.

Audience tier must be identified before drafting begins. When the summary will circulate across multiple tiers, calibrate to the most senior reader; functional-leader detail belongs in an appendix, not the summary body.

Never-Bury-Bad-News

Material risk, negative findings, and adverse outcomes appear in the opening of the relevant section — never at the end, never in a footnote, never softened by framing the positive first. The sequence "here are our wins, and by the way, we have a problem" is prohibited.

Bad news that is structurally minimised erodes trust faster than the bad news itself. Executives who discover buried risk after the fact lose confidence in subsequent summaries from the same author. Trust rebuilt after a concealment event costs more than trust maintained by transparent disclosure in the first instance.

If the summary's recommendation carries a risk that makes a reasonable reader question whether the recommendation is sound, that risk is stated prominently, not buried. The role of this skill is to enable informed decisions, not to construct a persuasive case for a predetermined outcome.

Cognitive-Economy Discipline

Every word in the summary must earn its place against the decision.

• Quantify over qualify: "revenue declined 18% QoQ to $4.2M" is admissible; "revenue was significantly lower" is not.
• Concrete over abstract: "the migration deadline is 30 June" is admissible; "the timeline is tight" is not.
• Noun over adjective: "a $1.2M cost overrun" is admissible; "a major cost overrun" is not.
• Active voice: "the CFO must approve by 15 May" is admissible; "approval is required" obscures ownership and is not admissible.
• Jargon gate: technical terminology is permitted only when the named audience tier is confirmed expert. When audience expertise is mixed, the plain-language equivalent is used.

Filler phrases ("it is important to note", "in order to", "as mentioned above") are struck on the first pass. The two-pass review gate (ADR-058) enforces this.

Recommendation Discipline

A recommendation must be actionable, named, and dated. The three criteria are jointly necessary; any one missing renders the item a suggestion, not a recommendation.

• Actionable: the reader can execute it without further interpretation. "Reduce headcount in the logistics function by 12% through attrition over two quarters" is actionable. "Consider headcount optimisation" is not.
• Named owner: a specific role or individual, not a team or department. "CFO" is a named owner. "Finance" is not.
• Dated: a specific calendar date or bounded period. "By 30 June" is dated. "In the near term" is not.

Where multiple recommendations appear, they are ranked by urgency and impact. Labelling conventions: Critical (blocks a decision or legal obligation), High (material impact within 30 days), Medium (material impact within 90 days). No more than one Critical item per summary; if more than one Critical item exists, the summary scope is too broad.

Decision-Grade Reporting

When the summary sits atop a structured analysis — a competitive study, a benchmark, a technical audit, or a multi-option evaluation — the one-page mechanics above still hold, and four additional disciplines keep the summary driving a decision rather than documenting the work. (The underlying analysis is typically produced under domains/business-support/skills/analytics-reporter; this skill compresses its findings into the decision.)

1. Decision-first, methodology last. Open with the three-to-five findings that change what the reader does — where the subject is strong, where it is exposed, and the top two-to-three moves — written so a reader who reads only the summary knows what to do. How the analysis was run (weights, rubrics, sample, scope) belongs in an appendix, never the opening. Where a single visual resolves the decision faster than a paragraph, lead with it, within the one-page ceiling.
2. Asserted vs. proven. Every load-bearing claim carries its provenance: is it proven (measured, sourced, independently verifiable) or asserted (inference, single source, estimate)? A one-line verification note per major claim, with the sources behind it in the appendix, is what makes the summary auditable and defensible. A decision made on an asserted claim dressed as a proven one is the failure this discipline exists to prevent — it is the provenance complement to the Cognitive-Economy quantify-over-qualify rule.
3. No false composite. When findings span multiple dimensions — cost, risk, capability, time — do not collapse them into one blended score or a single status dot. Averaging distinct dimensions hides the asymmetry the decision turns on: an option that is cheap-but-slow and one that is fast-but-costly can average to the same number while demanding opposite decisions. Report the dimensions separately and state plainly where the subject leads and where it trails.
4. Close on forcing-questions. If the summary feeds a decision or alignment meeting, end with the specific questions that force a choice — which option, which risk to accept, which gap to close versus concede — not a recap. A close that invites admiration of the analysis ("as the data shows...") wastes the meeting; a close that names the pending decision runs it.

Anti-patterns

Anti-pattern	Symptom	Correction
Thesis-buried	Recommendation appears in the final paragraph after extensive context	Move recommendation to first sentence; restructure as SCQ
Jargon-soup	Three or more unexplained acronyms or domain terms in the opening paragraph	Apply jargon gate; expand or replace with plain-language equivalent
No-recommendation	Summary ends with "the team will continue to monitor" or equivalent	Identify and state the specific decision and recommended option
Vanity-data	Metrics included that do not bear on the decision (e.g., team headcount in a budget summary)	Remove; every metric must trace to a decision criterion
Hidden-bad-news	Risk or adverse finding appears after positive findings or in a footnote	Lead with risk in its section; promote from footnote to body
Scope-creep	Summary exceeds 350 words or covers more than one primary decision	Scope to one decision; move secondary decisions to separate summaries
Methodology-first	Summary opens by explaining how the analysis was run before stating what it found	Move the top findings to the opening sentence; methodology to the appendix
False-composite	Multi-dimensional findings collapsed into one blended score or status dot that hides asymmetry	Report the dimensions separately; name where the subject leads and where it trails
Analysis-admiration	Summary closes by recapping the work instead of forcing the pending decision	End with the specific choice the reader must make; forcing-questions, not a recap

Cross-References

Related skills within this framework:

• domains/business-support/skills/analytics-reporter — data-narrative reports and exploratory findings that feed the summary-authoring context.
• domains/sales/skills/proposal-strategist — persuasion-to-close documents where the primary goal is commercial commitment rather than decision enablement.
• domains/finance-accounting/skills/financial-analyst — board-pack financial content and variance analysis that may be compressed into an executive summary under this skill.

ADR Anchors

• ADR-058 — two-pass review gate; applies to all outputs produced under this skill. First pass: content completeness and decision structure. Second pass: cognitive-economy and jargon gate.

Changelog

• PLAN-153 Wave G (SP-039, 2026-07-09): decision-grade reporting discipline folded in (clean-room ADAPT; provenance in frontmatter/NOTICE). Skill-Import-Attestation: reviewed-by=AE9B236FDAF0462874060C6BCFCFACF00335DC74; sha256=0e69d05f23abb6b12b1b9c2fc94d402a8feb04e21d17ea6101d0d18344ba31aa