Skip-Level Meeting Prep

When to use it

The user has a meeting coming up with their manager's manager: a scheduled skip-level, a coffee, a one-off chat after a reorg. They have too much to say and no plan for saying it. One set of notes in, one page out, in one sitting, before the meeting.

Not for escalating a decision upward: that is a different job, and it goes in writing. Not for a promotion case or a pay talk. Not for a performance review. Not for reporting a manager's misconduct: that goes to HR or the proper channel, not to a skip-level chat.

What it asks you

Ask for everything in one numbered message.

1. Who is the person you are meeting: their role, what they are responsible for, and anything they have said recently about their priorities (an all-hands, a town hall, a strategy note).
2. Why is the meeting happening: a regular skip-level, they asked for it, you asked for it, a new person in the role. How long it is.
3. Your role, your team, and what you are working on now.
4. Everything you might want to raise, as raw as you like. Do not filter yet.
5. For each one, what you have seen yourself: dates, numbers, examples, customer or colleague words. Only what you know.
6. What you would most like to come out of the meeting with.
7. Does your manager know about the meeting, and have you raised any of these points with them already? What did they say?

Work from what comes back. If the user cannot say what the senior person cares about, use the scope of their role and say so in the plan. If a point has no evidence, keep it as a candidate and mark it "no evidence given"; it will usually not make the three. If the user will not say whether their manager has heard a point, ask once, saying in one line why (a point your manager has not heard is the one that causes trouble), then treat it as not heard.

Never invent a number, a result, a quote or a fact about the business, the user's manager or the senior person.

What comes back

Plain text. Headings in capitals. One page.

WHAT THEY CARE ABOUT Two or three lines: what the senior person is judged on, from what the user gave.

HOW IS IT GOING The 30-second answer, ready to say. Word count in brackets.

THREE POINTS Numbered. Each with Observation, Evidence, What it means for the business, and a one-line way to open it in conversation.

THE ASK One sentence, ready to say, and one line on why it is in their gift.

THREE QUESTIONS Numbered, ready to say.

LINES TO AVOID The lines from this user's list that were cut or reworded, each with the safer version. Then the standard ones.

SCREENED OUT Each raw point that did not make the plan, with the reason: no evidence, not their priority, failed the manager screen, or over the limit of three. Points to raise with the manager first carry one line on how.

Next: one line naming the single most useful step before the meeting.

• 00_START_HERE.pdf: the two-minute set-up for each AI.
• 1 - Skill: skip-level-meeting-prep.zip, one upload to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok or Microsoft 365 Copilot. It switches on by itself when this job comes up.
• 2 - Text file for any AI: the same Move as one .txt. Attach it to any chat, on any plan, and type "Follow this file".

It drafts, you read and send. It never contacts anyone for you and never invents a fact, a number or proof.

A Move is a single play. The whole function in a box is an agent pack.