Creating an Update from an Unscripted Share
One way to prepare an update is to use a form. The Update and Presentation Prep Pack has five update worksheets, and there's more in The Monthly Update and Creative Update Formats.
It can also work to just talk — ten unscripted minutes, out loud, in whatever order it comes — and let Sage help shape it into an update.
The following is an example of what this might look like.
Before I start: I've got an update due Thursday. Instead of starting with the form, I'm going to talk it out unscripted — and then I'd like your help shaping it into the update. Here goes.
Good way to do it. Talk as long as you like, in any order — don't clean it up on my account. When you're done, tell me, and we'll shape it from there.
Good ask — that's exactly what a transcript is for. You talked for twenty-five minutes; here's what the whole thing looks like from above.
You said "I don't know" five times, and never about the deal. The deal you know cold — you've been through the model three times. Every "I don't know" arrives at the exact moment you get near yourself: what you see when you look at the firm, what you'll tell Carol, whether you could become the guy in the model. Your knowledge stops precisely where your feelings start.
You defended Paul before every criticism — four times. "None of this is a Paul problem." "The model is not wrong." "Paul's plan isn't wrong, I keep saying that and I mean it." Nobody accused Paul. Whoever you're defending him to is inside the transcript, and I don't think it's your forum.
Three sentences didn't survive. "He came in when — well, he came in seven years ago." "I look at it and I see, I don't know what I see." And the big one: "So when I say we built it to this size, I don't... anyway." That last one broke off one breath after you caught yourself — "Me and Paul didn't build it, Paul bought into it built." You stopped exactly where it was about to become about twenty-five years versus seven.
Your detours are suspiciously well-timed. The bagel arrives right after "there's something else underneath it and I keep handing him the risk speech instead." The car noise arrives right after "That's the speech." Every time you touch the real thing, something mechanical shows up to talk about instead. On Sunday you did it to yourself in person: forty minutes alone to feel something, and you ran the earnout math.
And one thing you put down and picked back up in the same breath: Danny's office. "It's been... anyway. That's not related. Not this month's thing." You said it's not this month's thing, so I'll leave it where you put it. I just want you to know it registered.
When something won't resolve, you count it. Three passes through Paul's model. Four visits to the shop for a noise nobody can find. Forty minutes in the conference room that turned into earnout math. Every Friday evening, every status report, alone. The numbers are where you go when a feeling starts — you said it yourself: "me hiding in the numbers, I know it."
And here's what isn't in the transcript: feelings. Twenty-five minutes, and not one named feeling — no worried, no sad, no afraid. The closest you came was "which was worse somehow." For a decision this size, that's not an oversight. That's the speech doing its job.
None of that is a verdict — it's what the transcript shows. And it all points where your own best sentence points: "I have a speech and a feeling. The speech I don't believe and the feeling I can't say."
That's the big picture — and it's a longer list than one update needs. We don't have to touch all of it. Want to explore one of these now, or go straight to shaping the update?
The detour one — that's the one that got me. Noticing the bagel every time I get near something real. I want to come back to that, but not today. Today let's do the update, one piece at a time, and the piece that matters is the no — why I can't hand Paul an answer. Start there.
Then it keeps — bring the detours to another conversation whenever you're ready. The no, then. Here's the thread I'd pull, and you can pick a different one: Sunday, alone in that conference room, trying to see it full and running earnout math instead. What were you feeling, sitting there? Not thinking. Feeling.
...You counted. That's a little unnerving. Nobody's ever played my own tape back at me like that.
Okay, that thread. Honestly? Something like dread. Which is strange, because nothing bad was happening. I was alone in a room I own on a Sunday. But sitting there trying to picture it full — dread. Not of the deal failing. Of it working.
Dread of it working. Worth saying twice — most people dread the crash; you dread the landing.
Is dread the whole of it? Sometimes one feeling stands in front of others. Anything else in that room with it? "No, that's it" is a fine answer.
There's something like sadness. Saying goodbye to the place while I'm still standing in it. And — this is harder to say — I think I'm ashamed. Because I can't defend any of this. Paul has a model. I have a mood.
Dread, sadness, shame. Three real ones. And notice what you did to the third the moment you said it — you demoted it to "a mood." I'm keeping the word you actually used. Ashamed.
Where does all this live in your body, right now, on the walk? People know immediately or not at all — either is fine.
That one's easy. There's a knot in my chest, right in the center. It's there right now.
A knot in the center of your chest. It goes in exactly like that.
Now the shame. You said "I can't defend any of this" — and about Paul: "he's earned a real answer, and the reason I haven't given him one is I don't have one." What's the rule you'd be breaking if you handed him a no with nothing behind it?
Huh. The rule is: if I can't back it up, I don't get to say it. A decision I can't prove isn't mine to make. I've been living by that my whole career and I don't think I've ever said it out loud.
There it is, one sentence: a decision I can't prove isn't mine to make. That's a belief, not a law of nature — and it's the exact thing standing between you and the answer you say Paul has earned.
A rule that strong usually got installed somewhere, not deduced. Does anything come to mind — a moment, a person — where you learned that a decision without proof doesn't count? "I don't know" is a completely fine answer.
Actually — yes. First year out of school, I was an analyst. I told a VP the growth assumption in a deal model was wrong. He asked me why and I couldn't articulate it, I just knew. He shredded me in front of the whole team. The deal cratered eighteen months later on exactly that assumption. Never mattered. What stuck was: never say a thing out loud you can't prove on paper.
Stay with that ending a second, because it's stranger than it sounds. The deal cratered. You were right. And the rule you took from it wasn't "trust my judgment" — it was "never be that exposed again." The rule didn't keep the lesson of the deal. It kept what happened to you, in that room.
Which means the rule was never about being correct. It's about never standing in front of people without proof in your hands. And now the Friday hour from your walk comes back: the best hour of your week is also something you can't justify — "what do you say, my favorite thing is reading status reports in an empty office." So you've never said it. To anyone. For years.
Same rule, both places. It doesn't just block the no you owe Paul. It's been keeping the things you love a secret.
...Huh.
I walked in here thinking the problem was that I can't say no to Paul. But the Friday thing — you're right, it's the same thing. I never told Carol about it. Twenty-five years of the best hour of my week and I never told my own wife, because I couldn't make it sound reasonable.
So it's not the deal. The rule's been running the whole time. Anything I can't defend, I just — don't say. The no to Paul. The Friday hour. God knows what else. Thursday isn't scary because of the deal. Thursday is that VP's conference room. It's me standing in front of seven people with nothing in my hands.
That's yours, not mine — you just connected twenty-five years in one move. And notice you did it without proof. You just knew, the same way you knew about that growth assumption.
I won't touch it further; that's what Thursday is for. Want me to write this up as your sheet? Everything in it is what you said — fix anything that's wrong.
Yes. Write it up.
Before I write it — how do you want it structured? I can fill in your group's sheet, the four boxes you could draw from memory. Or it can follow the way it actually came out: the situation in a sentence, what you're feeling, and what it means.
Not the boxes. The boxes are how I've been hiding. The second way.
Here it is, built from what you said.
YOUR UPDATE — Thursday
1. The situation, in a sentence: My partner Paul wants to take a deal that would triple the firm, his model is right, and I keep saying no without being able to tell him why.
2. What I'm feeling: Dread — of the deal working, not failing. Sadness — like saying goodbye to the place while I'm still standing in it. Shame — because I can't defend my no. Paul has a model; I have a feeling.
3. The significance: It lives in my body as a knot in the center of my chest — there right now. Underneath it is a belief I've never said out loud: "A decision I can't prove isn't mine to make." The belief has a source. My first year as an analyst, I told a VP a deal model's growth assumption was wrong and couldn't articulate why. He shredded me in front of the whole team. The deal cratered on that assumption a year and a half later — I was right, and it never mattered. What the rule kept wasn't the lesson of the deal. It was that room. And the rule hasn't just been blocking my answer to Paul. It's had me hiding anything I can't justify — including the best hour of my week, which I've never told anyone about, because I couldn't make it sound reasonable.
If I were to present today, the topic would be: What it would take to say something true without proof in my hands — starting with my answer to Paul.
You can direct Sage — ask for the big picture first, ask it to pull a thread, ask it to write it up. It follows your lead.