Four questionsOne script
What you say in sixty seconds.
A board asks four questions. Most product answers cover the first two beautifully and change the subject on the third. This page is the sixty seconds that covers all four.
Because that is how long you get before somebody interrupts with a follow-up. If the outcome is not in the first sixty seconds, the follow-up will be about something else.
A board asks four questions, and only one of them is about outcomes.
The other three are context. They matter, and they are also the three that a well-prepared product leader can answer without ever saying whether the work mattered.
Are we building the right things?
They are checking whether somebody chose, or whether the roadmap is just everything that was asked for.
Name the bet, name what you declined, and say who made the call.
Are we moving fast enough?
They are checking whether you know your own throughput well enough to be held to it.
Give the number, then immediately reframe it as an input rather than a result.
Is it working?
This is the real question, and it is the one most answers quietly avoid.
Landed, watch, or stalled, with counts. Include the stalled ones by name.
What would you stop?
They are testing whether your read on your own work has any teeth.
Name one thing you are stopping and what its budget is moving to.
Six lines, in this order, answer all four questions before anyone interrupts.
The order matters more than the wording. Outcome arrives on line three, the bad news arrives on line four while you still have the room, and the decision arrives on line five.
- 01
Last quarter we made three bets and declined eleven requests.
the choosing - 02
We shipped more than we ever have, and I treat that as an input, not a result.
the reframe - 03
Two of the three landed, meaning behaviour changed in most accounts.
the outcome - 04
One stalled. It has been live a quarter and changed nothing measurable.
the uncomfortable part - 05
We are stopping it this month and moving that budget to the search work.
the teeth - 06
Every one of those reads uses the same definition, including the one I championed.
the credibility
What you can honestly say depends on which stage you are actually at.
Reaching for the stage five answer before you have the stage five evidence is the single fastest way to lose a board's trust, because the follow-up question always arrives.
“We shipped fourteen things and the team is moving well.”
Answers Q2 and avoids Q3 entirely. A board hears the avoidance.
“We shipped fourteen things and we are measuring three of them.”
Honest, and clearly mid-build. Buys patience for exactly one quarter.
“Two of three bets landed, one stalled, and here is what we are stopping.”
Answers all four questions in one breath and hands them the decision.
Every line in the script has to come from somewhere you can point at.
If a line cannot be traced to one of these four sources, it is a feeling, and a board will find that out on the second follow-up.
- Decision recordQ1The dated bet, the declined requests, and the name attached to each call.
- Deploy and delivery dataQ2Throughput, stated as an input so it cannot be mistaken for an outcome.
- Behaviour read, four weeks afterQ3Landed, watch, or stalled, using one definition applied without exception.
- The stalled listQ4What is being stopped, and which bet inherits the budget.
The hard part is line three, and that is what Throughline produces.
One console, pointed at a real company's public record, generating the landed read that line three of the script depends on.