Most business software is designed to be looked at for as long as possible. The morning brief is designed to be closed as quickly as possible, by an owner who has somewhere better to be.
Everything Morna does overnight ends in one short page. It is meant to be the only thing an owner has to read, and it has to answer four questions in about a minute: what matters most today, what needs me, what got done, and can I trust it.
What is in it
- A one-line summary: how many decisions wait, how much was done.
- The priority: the single thing most worth your attention, in a sentence.
- Your decisions, at most three at a time, each with the exact words that would go out, who they go to, and why.
- What was recorded, each figure with its source one tap away.
Why three
A queue of twenty approvals is a queue of twenty approvals nobody reads carefully. Three is a number a person can hold in mind, judge properly, and finish. When there are more, the brief says so plainly (three of seven) and the next ones come forward as the first are cleared. Order is decided by consequence, not by time of arrival.
What we took out
Charts that are not tied to a decision. Activity counts that sound impressive and mean nothing. Anything that asks the owner to go and look somewhere else first. A good brief does not show that a lot of work happened. It shows what the work changed, and what it needs.
We also took out the performance of busyness. A quiet night says it was quiet. A connection that broke says it broke. The brief is worth reading because it does not pretend.
From one sentence about what you sell to the first brief, the next morning.
The test
Our test for the brief is the one an owner applies without thinking: did I read it, did I act on it, and did I close it feeling that the company was in hand? If the answer is yes most mornings, the rest of the product is doing its job.