FREESKILL v1.0UPDATED 2026-08

4 Blocker Business Reviews

A recurring business review becomes less reliable when the summary is written first and the blocks are backfilled to support it. Build the blocks first, write the summary last, and check the draft before circulation.

A 4-block review gives a reader one weekly account of a business area: position against goals, material trends, risks, metrics, next actions, and prior actions still open. It is read rather than presented.

Sort the inputs before writing the summary. An unlabeled estimate is likely to be treated as fact in the next cycle, so label every gap where it appears.

The summary is written last, or it is written from memory.

SIGNALS YOU NEED THIS

Your weekly review reports green into a quarter it then misses.

Actions open in the review and quietly disappear two weeks later.

The goals are numbers nobody can move until after the period closes.

REPLACES

Slide-driven weekly readouts, status spreadsheets nobody argues with, and the review that needs its author in the room.

PAIRS WITH

Weekly Status Updates, Silent Meetings, and The 3Ps Framework.

0 of 4 steps complete

STEP 01Sort before you write

Sort every input into the four blocks first, and pull all of last week's actions forward, including the ones nobody touched. If an input fits none of the four blocks, decide whether it belongs in actions, the appendix, or outside the review. Do not force it into a block. The sort is working, not output; it does not appear in what the reader receives.

THE FOUR BLOCKS
1. Where we are            summary, four lines or fewer, written LAST
2. Key call-outs and trends   full sentences, because a trend is an argument
3. Major risks and issues     table: risk, owner, mitigation, revised date
4. Metrics summary            both sides of every change, with the reason

Then: upcoming activities, goals, actions carried forward, appendix.

No previous review? Say so in the actions table rather than omitting it.

STEP 02Label every gap in position

A missing owner is Owner: unassigned in the owner column, a missing date is Date needed, a missing number is Figure needed. Never invent one, never infer an owner from a job function, and never fill a field by elimination because it is the last one empty. A supplied value is never replaced by a placeholder.

| Risk or issue | Owner | Mitigation | Revised date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stated as the consequence, not the activity | Owner: unassigned | Mitigation needed | Date needed |

Arithmetic on supplied figures is not invention: a percentage of a stated
goal, a week-over-week delta, or a prior cumulative recovered by subtraction
are all derivable. The line is whether a reader holding only the inputs could
reach the same number. If they could not, it is a gap.

A week number fixes a date range, so week 14 with no date takes its
week-ending date from week 14, never from the current week.

STEP 03Set goals that can move

If a number is available only after the period closes, treat it as a lagging outcome. Pair it with controllable leading measures the team can move during the period. Show the original outcome and the proposed leading measures side by side; do not silently replace the stated goal.

HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLE
| Stated outcome | Proposed leading measures | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Increase quarterly renewal rate from [baseline] to [target] by 03/31/2026
  | Ship the dunning rebuild by 02/15/2026; run two offer tests by 03/01/2026
  | Renewal rate is the outcome. These dated deliverables are controllable inputs. |

Dependencies are recorded and checked: a goal with an unscheduled dependency
cannot be green even when the team's own work is on plan.

STEP 04Check it, then send it

Run the draft check line by line before circulation, and fix what fails rather than reporting it. Send only the review artifact. If it needs a preamble, revise the title, summary, or gap labels until the document carries its own meaning.

VERDICT: ready to send | one pass needed | not ready
Plus one sentence naming the single most important thing to fix.

NOT IN THE ARTIFACT, AND NOT AROUND IT
- no preamble, no sorting table, no step commentary
- no closing summary and no offer to revise
- no count of how many gaps were labeled
- use periods or colons when they make the logic clearer
- avoid stacked dashes and improvised double hyphens
- label ASCII-only punctuation as a technical artifact constraint, not a voice rule

Download the folder into your agent's skills directory. It uses only the material you provide and makes no remote calls.

skills/4-blocker-business-reviews

4-blocker-business-reviews/
├── SKILL.md                     ← the three modes and the guardrails
├── meta.yaml                    ← version, sources, test prompts, changelog
├── LICENSE.md                   ← MIT
├── assets/
│   ├── review-template.md       ← the four blocks and the appendix shape
│   ├── goal-set-template.md     ← controllable inputs and the rewrites table
│   └── draft-check.md           ← the line-by-line check and the verdict
└── references/
    ├── writing-conventions.md   ← numbers, dates, periods, voice, length
    ├── worked-example.md        ← a full review built from incomplete inputs
    └── circulation.md           ← lead time, who talks, the 24-hour follow-up

INVOKE IT LIKE THIS

"Turn this business area's week into a 4-block review."

View source on GitHub Download ZIP v1.0

WORKS WITHClaude Code