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A weekly business review that ends in decisions

Five members of the Executive Coaching work group on agendas, charts, customer evidence and which issues earn a slot.

Updated October 13, 2026

Give the review two jobs, a shared read of a few metrics and a small number of decisions, and open each meeting by checking what last week's decisions did.

  • Look at the same charts every week. Julie Zhuo opens with a 5 to 15 minute walk through time-series charts for the shared goals, with prep kept under 30 minutes. Seeing the same series each week teaches leaders what a normal fluctuation looks like.
  • Start from the quarter's goal. Christina Wodtke has each owner give their confidence in reaching the key results, what they tried last week and their priorities for this one. A result with no new information gets a quick no change.
  • Split 30 minutes three ways. Nikhyl Singhal gives 5 minutes to shared measures, 15 to the two biggest exceptions and 10 to decisions and last week's commitments. Elena Luneva picks those two by the size and timing of the risk, and by whether the room can resolve it.
  • Bring customer evidence with the chart. Cat Lee asks the owner of a surprising trend for a customer call, observed session or support pattern that tests their explanation. When a metric stays flat after a fix, Christina reexamines the explanation and Cat goes back to customers before another fix is approved.

Group chat with Julie, Cat, Nikhyl, Christina, Elena — the Executive Coaching work group

Question:

How do you run a weekly business review that leaders use?

Julie Zhuo
Julie ZhuoCo-founder of Sundial. Author of The Making of a Manager and former VP of Product Design at Facebook
I would give the WBR two distinct jobs: help leaders see the same picture, then make the few decisions that picture calls for.
  1. Start with a 5–15 minute metrics review at the beginning of an existing leadership meeting. Have a data partner walk through time-series charts for the few shared goals, plus segments that matter right now, such as a test market or a customer group affected by a launch. Keep prep under 30 minutes. The first outcome is that leaders can say how they're tracking against goals, which levers seem to matter, and what counts as a normal fluctuation. Stanley Watt and I describe this as a practice that can run at the executive level as well as within product teams.Medium
  2. Give the actual decision its own agenda slot. When someone asks for another cut of the data, ask what they would do under the optimistic and pessimistic answers. If the action stays the same, skip the analysis. For example, 'Which of our top ten countries is struggling this quarter?' gives a leader a more useful next step than a ranking of every country.Medium
You can begin with ten minutes every other week and have the team try it for a quarter. Adjust the metrics and segments after the first few sessions.Medium
Christina Wodtke
Christina WodtkeLecturer at Stanford University and author of Radical Focus. Former General Manager at Zynga
Make the weekly review answer one question: what are we doing this week to get closer to our strategic goal? Start with the quarter's objective and its key results, meaning the outcomes you expect to change. Then have each owner share their confidence in reaching those results, what they tried last week, what happened, and their top priorities for this week. I used that short update format at Zynga. The useful part was seeing where a planned action stalled, so someone could help with a missing dependency or a hard conversation.Apple Podcasts
Keep the live meeting for the changes leaders can make: pick a priority, resolve a dependency, or ask an owner to try something else. If a result has no new information, say "no change" and move on; a Monday check-in can take 20 to 30 minutes when it stays focused. Keep a month-long lookahead for work that takes longer than a week.Spotify
Cat Lee
Cat LeeFounder and executive coach at Real & Kind. Former Head of Growth at Pinterest
A metric can flag the problem without explaining it. I’d pair the chart with one piece of customer evidence before the team decides what to change. At Pinterest, our international activation rate looked okay, yet watching people use the product in local markets showed that the content felt too American for them. That changed which problem we worked on.Apple Podcasts
Julie’s shared chart gives the team a starting point. When a trend surprises us, I’d ask the owner to bring a customer call, observed session, or support pattern that tests their explanation. Record the decision, its owner, and what evidence they’ll bring next week. If the same metric stays flat while the team keeps proposing small fixes, spend time with customers before approving another fix.
Julie Zhuo
Julie ZhuoCo-founder of Sundial. Author of The Making of a Manager and former VP of Product Design at Facebook
Christina's confidence check gets stronger when leaders can see why confidence changed. Put the goal trend next to each owner's update, then ask whether a dip is normal for that business or signals a change in the plan. Enterprise software may dip on weekends while games may rise, so a single week's number needs context. In our piece, Stanley Watt and I argue that repeated exposure to the same time-series helps teams learn their normal range and spot suspect measurements, such as a reported 20% lift in a metric that rarely moves.Medium
Christina Wodtke
Christina WodtkeLecturer at Stanford University and author of Radical Focus. Former General Manager at Zynga
Give Friday a different job. Monday commits the team to a few actions; Friday asks what actually happened and recognizes the work that moved the goal. In my Radical Focus cadence, that short celebration helps teams see progress across functions, while a quarterly retrospective asks what they learned and whether the objective or key results need to change.Apple Podcasts+1
Cat's customer evidence belongs in that learning cycle. If the team tried a fix and the outcome stayed flat, the next review should examine the explanation before assigning another fix.
Question:
Nikhyl Singhal, Julie Zhuo starts with shared charts, and Christina Wodtke starts with owners' progress toward quarterly results. How would you structure a 30-minute weekly review so leaders can make decisions and track them the next week? Please cite public sources.
Nikhyl Singhal
Nikhyl SinghalFounder of the Skip community. Former VP of Product at Meta and CPO at Credit Karma
I’d split the 30 minutes into 5 minutes on the shared business measures, 15 minutes on the two biggest exceptions, and 10 minutes on decisions and last week’s commitments. The owner of each exception brings the trend, their explanation, and a proposed action. The leader running the review makes the call, names one owner and a due date, then opens the next meeting by checking the outcome. Julie’s chart and Christina’s owner update fit together in that sequence.
Make sure the measures expose the company’s actual risk. At Cast Iron, paying-customer count looked encouraging while each customer needed different features and engineers were drowning in requests. I would have used the review to ask whether the next customer could use the same product, then assigned someone to test that assumption before expanding the roadmap.review.firstround At Credit Karma, we also held monthly executive product reviews as the product organization grew; a weekly meeting should escalate the immediate cross-team decisions and leave longer-range product context to that deeper review.review.firstround
Question:
Elena Luneva, Nikhyl Singhal gives 15 minutes to the two biggest exceptions each week. How would you choose those two when teams bring more issues than the meeting can handle? Please cite public sources.
Elena Luneva
Elena LunevaChief Product & Technology Officer at Madison Reed. Former Chief Product Officer at Braintrust
I’d choose the two exceptions where a decision this week could change a business outcome. Ask each owner to submit four lines before the meeting: which of the agreed 2–3 outcomes is at risk, what changed in the measure or customer evidence, what happens if we wait a week, and which decision they need from this group. Rank first by the size and timing of the risk, then by whether the room has the authority to resolve it. Send issues an owner can settle alone back to that owner.
The financial link matters. While pitching Nextdoor Maps, I brought research and engagement data, then the CFO asked about payback and return on investment. I learned to connect projected usage to revenue and delivery costs, and to model downside cases such as weaker adoption or higher data costs. Those figures in my published example are illustrative, rather than reported results. In a WBR, a cost increase that changes the investment decision deserves a slot ahead of a usage change that leaves the plan intact.Substack
I’d put the other issues in a written queue with an owner and a date to revisit. My product business review cadence looks at strategic outcomes and systemic cross-team issues monthly or every six weeks, which is a better home for trends that need deeper discussion.Substack

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In This Conversation

  • Julie Zhuo
    Julie Zhuo

    Co-founder of Sundial. Author of The Making of a Manager and former VP of Product Design at Facebook

  • Cat Lee
    Cat Lee

    Founder and executive coach at Real & Kind. Former Head of Growth at Pinterest

  • Nikhyl Singhal
    Nikhyl Singhal

    Founder of the Skip community. Former VP of Product at Meta and CPO at Credit Karma

  • Christina Wodtke
    Christina Wodtke

    Lecturer at Stanford University and author of Radical Focus. Former General Manager at Zynga

  • Elena Luneva
    Elena Luneva

    Chief Product & Technology Officer at Madison Reed. Former Chief Product Officer at Braintrust

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