If you hand a CEO, venture capitalist, or board member a 10-page document, they will do one of two things: forward it to a junior associate, or skim the bold headings on page 1 for 15 seconds and make an assumption.
Executives don't have time to read mystery novels where the conclusion is revealed on the final page. They demand BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front.
The 3 Pillars of BLUF
- 1. The Outcome (Sentence 1): What happened compared to our goal? (e.g. "Q3 Revenue closed at $1.4M, beating target by 12%.").
- 2. The Driver (Sentence 2): What single factor drove this outcome? (e.g. "Enterprise tier signups grew 45% following the DataClerk launch.").
- 3. The Threat (Sentence 3): What is the single biggest risk to next quarter? (e.g. "Server API latency increased by 180ms during peak load.").
🎖️ THE 45-WORD EXECUTIVE PROMPT
Read the 20-page quarterly deck below.
Write a military-grade BLUF executive briefing with exactly 3 bullet points:
• Metric: Actual revenue vs target (with % variance).
• Driver: The single highest-performing customer channel.
• Risk: The #1 threat to next quarter's runway.
Hard rule: Maximum 15 words per bullet. Zero corporate fluff.