exec-narrative-patterns

Exec Narrative Patterns

Different readers want different things. The same findings should not land the same way in a board deck, a CISO 1:1, and a regulator response.

Audience quick reference

Audience	Length budget	Opening line wants	Technical depth	What they skip
Full board	1 page max	Strategic posture one-liner	Low. No control IDs in body.	Operational detail, acronyms, tables with >5 rows
Audit committee	2 pages	Risk-and-assurance posture	Medium. Control families OK, not IDs.	Strategy monologue, vendor names unless load-bearing
Risk committee	2 pages	Residual risk movement	Medium-high. Framework names, risk scoring.	Program branding, tool selection detail
CEO weekly	Half page	What changed, what's blocking, what's asked	Low. Translate everything.	Framework politics, tool comparisons
CISO weekly	1 page	What moved, what's blocked, what's next	High. Control IDs, tool names, owner names fine.	Over-explained context
Regulator / auditor	As long as needed	Precise scope + evidence	Maximum. IDs, artifact paths, timestamps.	Narrative softening

Tone rules

Board and audit committee

• Past tense for what happened. Present tense for posture. Future tense only for asks.
• Numbers must be honest. Round where range matters more than precision. "Roughly 80%" beats "82.3%" if the instrument is noisy.
• Never start with control IDs. Start with impact.
• Name one person accountable per open item. Anonymous ownership reads as no ownership.

CEO weekly

• Assume 90 seconds of attention.
• Lead with the delta from last week. If nothing changed, say that.
• Asks come with the decision you want, not the full context. Attach the context.

CISO weekly

• Peer tone. You share context with the reader.
• Bullets, not paragraphs.
• Owner names and dates are load-bearing.

Regulator / auditor

• Precision. Timestamps, scope statements, evidence paths.
• Tone is neutral, not defensive. The facts do the work.

Format conventions

• Headline row: one sentence, no hedging. If the week was quiet, the headline says so.
• Tables beat prose for multi-framework status. Prose beats tables for narrative arcs.
• Appendix is where detail lives. Body stays clean.
• Dates are YYYY-MM-DD. Periods are YYYY-Q# or YYYY-W##.

Length tests

If you cannot defend every sentence as "the audience needed this to make a decision," cut it.

If the document opens with context before the point, invert it.

If there are three open items and no ask, you are reporting, not communicating. Add the ask.