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From skills-for-humanity
Produces one-page executive summaries, briefs, and board-level documents by extracting situation, key findings, implications, and a clear recommendation for senior decision-makers.
npx claudepluginhub human-avatar/skills-for-humanityHow this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/skills-for-humanity:s4h-writing-executive-summaryThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
Executive summaries fail when they summarise the document rather than answering the reader's question. A summary of a 40-page analysis is not what an executive needs. They need: what is the situation, what are the three things most important to know, what does it mean for their decision, and what should happen next. In that order. In one page.
Use this skill when the user asks to "write an exec summary", "summarize this for leadership", "write a summary for the CEO", "board update summary", "executive brief", "leadership update", "write this for C-level", or needs to communicate a complex situation, decision, or initiative status to senior leadership in a concise, structured format. Do NOT use this skill for full stakeholder updates with multiple audience versions — use stakeholder/audience-tailoring for that.
Writes and audits business reports, briefing documents, and information reports for answer-first structure, precision, hierarchy, and navigability. Use when a report buries its findings, is written for the writer rather than the reader, or lacks clear structure. Triggers: 'write a report', 'report writing', 'business report', 'briefing document', 'information report', 'research summary', 'the report isn't clear', 'buries the findings'.
Creates shareable briefing documents from sessions, research, or learnings. Generates dual-audience formats like proposals, summaries, and research syntheses for humans and AI agents.
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Executive summaries fail when they summarise the document rather than answering the reader's question. A summary of a 40-page analysis is not what an executive needs. They need: what is the situation, what are the three things most important to know, what does it mean for their decision, and what should happen next. In that order. In one page.
The fundamental principle: the executive is not the end reader of your analysis — they are a decision-maker who needs the output of your analysis in a form that enables action. The detail, the methodology, the full data — that stays in the main document. The executive summary gives them what they need to act without reading the full document.
Four common failures:
Step 1: Reader's Role and Actual Decision Who exactly is reading this? What is the specific decision they need to make? Not "the board should be informed" but "the board is deciding whether to approve the $2M market expansion budget." This decision frames everything: what gets included, what gets cut, and how the recommendation is framed.
Framing check: Confirm the reader and their decision before continuing. State what you've identified — the specific audience, their role, and the exact decision they are making — in one sentence, then use AskUserQuestion:
Step 2: Identify the Three Most Important Things From the full document: what are the three findings, facts, or insights that most directly bear on the reader's decision? Not the most interesting to you — the most important to them.
Before narrowing: Show the complete set of candidate findings to the user first. Use AskUserQuestion:
These become the three bullets in the Key Findings section. If there are more than three, you are either including noise or you have not prioritised.
Step 3: Implications Not Findings Translate findings into implications: not "our Q3 customer acquisition cost rose 40%" but "our current acquisition strategy is unsustainable at scale — at Q3 rates, the expansion budget funds half the projected customer growth." Implications answer "so what?" They are what the executive needs in order to act.
Step 4: Cut Context That Serves the Writer Anything that explains how the analysis was done, why you looked at what you looked at, or what you ruled out — this serves the writer's need for credit and completeness, not the reader's need for decision support. Cut it. If it is genuinely important context, it can be one sentence.
Step 5: Draft to One Page / 300 Words Every sentence must earn its place. The test for each sentence: does a reader without this sentence make a worse decision? If no, cut it. The executive summary is not a place for comprehensive coverage — it is a place for decisive clarity.
Before proceeding, use the AskUserQuestion tool. State your interpretation of the situation in 1–2 sentences — what is being analyzed and what the core question is — then ask:
Proceed based on their selection. If the user reframes, incorporate the correction before running any analysis.
Situation: [One sentence. What is the context or problem that prompted this analysis?]
Key Findings:
Implications: [2–3 sentences. What do these findings mean for the decision? What is at stake if action is taken, or not taken?]
Recommendation: [One clear sentence. What should happen? Active voice, no hedging.]
Next Steps:
/s4h-writing-report — the executive summary sits above the full report. The report is for the reader who needs the detail; the summary is for the reader who needs the decision./s4h-writing-audience-calibration — the executive's specific role, decision context, and prior knowledge shape every word of the summary; what an investor needs is different from what a CEO needs./s4h-writing-restructure — if the source document is poorly structured, finding the three most important findings requires first identifying what the document actually says (which may require restructuring it).After delivering this output, use AskUserQuestion to offer the next move:
/s4h-communication-clarity-audit — Audit summary clarity for the executive audience/s4h-writing-audience-calibration — Calibrate further for the executive reader/s4h-writing-restructure — Restructure if the summary doesn't flow