Worksheet: Board Memo Template

One page. Boards forgive incidents. They do not forgive surprises, and they do not forgive vagueness. This memo exists so that when something goes wrong on your watch, the board hears it from you, with numbers, before they hear it from anyone else.

Every number in the memo comes from the log. No adjective may do a number's job. Write the amount, the time, the count: not the adjective you hope they will accept in its place.

1. The situation

Three sentences. Numbers first. The reader should know the size and the current state of the problem by the end of the first line.

Sentence 1 (what happened, how big): ____________________________________

Sentence 2 (current state: contained or not, as of when): _______________

Sentence 3 (net financial and customer impact): _________________________

2. What happened and why it was possible

Root cause as system design, not blame. Name the control that was missing, in language a director can repeat: the refund tool had no upper limit; outbound posts required no approval. Never name a scapegoat, human or machine. A system that one error could break was the problem before the error arrived.

3. What we did

Containment, with times and costs. Detection to containment in minutes. What it cost. What it would have cost had it run longer, because that difference is the case for your response.

4. What changes

Controls, owners, dates. Committed, not considered.

5. What we ask of the board

One decision or one endorsement, stated plainly. If you are asking for nothing, state that no action is requested: an explicit nothing beats an implied something.

Before it goes out

• Every number traces to the log or the ledger
• A director could read it aloud in 90 seconds
• The root cause is a design statement, not a blame statement
• Every change has an owner and a date
• The ask is one sentence