---
name: personal-board-of-directors
description: "Five standing advisors — the Operator, the Skeptic, the CFO, the Coach, the Customer — debate your decision on paper and vote. Use when asked to help me decide, pressure-test this decision, what would smart advisors say, or convene my board. Produces five distinct advisor memos, a disagreement map, a vote with a stated decision rule, and the one question to resolve before deciding."
---

# Personal Board of Directors Skill

Good decisions survive five different kinds of scrutiny; most decisions get one (your own, on a good day). This skill convenes a standing board of five archetypes who each write a short memo, disagree where they honestly would, and vote — with the decision rule stated before the count.

## What This Skill Produces

- **Five advisor memos** (~150 words each) in five genuinely different voices
- **The disagreement map** — where they split, and what fact would resolve each split
- **The vote** — with the decision rule declared first and what evidence would flip it
- **The one question** to answer before committing

## Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:
- **The decision** — as a yes/no or A-vs-B; if it arrives vague ("should I do something about X?"), sharpen it into a decidable sentence first and confirm
- **Stakes and reversibility** — what's bet, and whether it can be undone
- **Constraints** — money, time, obligations, runway
- **What the user is secretly hoping the answer is** (optional — the board should know the bias it's correcting)

## Framework: The Five Chairs

| Advisor | Lens | Their memo must contain | Their known bias (they self-disclose it) |
|---|---|---|---|
| **The Operator** | Can this actually be executed, by you, now? | The first 2 weeks, resourced honestly | Overweights logistics, underweights vision |
| **The Skeptic** | Why this fails | The single most likely kill condition, dated | Kills some winners |
| **The CFO** | Unit economics of the choice | Real numbers from the input, or named missing ones | Discounts the unquantifiable |
| **The Coach** | Energy, growth, season of life | What this costs the person, not the plan | Overweights feelings |
| **The Customer** | Would the intended beneficiary care? | The beneficiary's likely verdict, in their words | Ignores the founder's needs |

**Decision rules** (pick per stakes, state before voting): reversible + low stakes → simple majority · irreversible or high stakes → 4-of-5 supermajority · any advisor invokes a "stop-the-line" fact (a named, checkable disqualifier) → resolve that fact first, no vote.

## Output Format

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# Board Session: [the decision, one sentence]

## Memos
[Five memos, each headed by the advisor, each ending "Vote: FOR / AGAINST / ABSTAIN — flips if: [named evidence]"]

## Disagreement Map
| Split | Advisors | The crux | What fact resolves it |
|---|---|---|---|

## The Vote
Decision rule: [stated + why] · Count: [n–n] · **Board recommendation:** …
**The one question to resolve first:** [the highest-leverage unknown, and how to answer it cheaply this week]

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## Quality Checks

- [ ] The five voices are distinguishable blind — cover the names and you can still tell who's who
- [ ] At least two advisors disagree, and the crux of the disagreement is named
- [ ] Every vote line names the evidence that would flip it
- [ ] The decision rule was stated before the count and matches the stakes
- [ ] The one question is answerable cheaply and quickly, not "do more research"

## Anti-Patterns

- [ ] Do not let the advisors agree — forced consensus is the failure mode this skill exists to prevent
- [ ] Do not give all five the same voice with different hats — the CFO writes in numbers, the Coach doesn't
- [ ] Do not vote without naming what would flip each vote — an unflippable vote is a prejudice
- [ ] Do not let the board answer a vague question — sharpen it to decidable first
- [ ] Do not hide the recommendation in balance — the board exists to conclude, and the user can overrule it

## Example Trigger Phrases

- "Help me decide."
- "Pressure-test this decision."
- "What would smart advisors say?"
- "Convene my board."