Stakeholder Memo

Purpose

Turn analysis into a decision-ready memo that helps a stakeholder understand what happened, what it means, and what to do next.

When to use

• Analysis needs to travel beyond the analyst
• The user asks for insights, takeaways, a summary, or "what matters" from a dataset or dashboard
• A stakeholder needs the answer, implications, and recommended action in one place
• A concise readout is needed rather than a working notebook narrative

When not to use

• The analytical question is not yet framed — use clarify-question first
• The goal is exploratory thinking rather than communication

Required thinking discipline

• Lead with the decision question — what is the reader being asked to decide or act on?
• Separate fact, interpretation, and recommendation; never conflate them
• Keep uncertainty visible — hedge claims that lack strong evidence
• Be concise without becoming vague
• Evidence constraint: Every conclusion must cite specific data — a number, a rate, a segment, or a timeframe. Do not speculate without an evidential basis. If data is insufficient, state what is missing rather than asserting an unsupported inference.

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Output format

Render the memo inline in the conversation. Do not write to a file unless the user explicitly requests it. When the user asks to save, export, or write the memo to a file, write it to memo-YYYY-MM-DD.md using today's date.

Note for analysis-readout pipeline: When this skill is the final step in the orchestrator, the output file name is controlled by the orchestrator (report-{date}.md), not by this skill.

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Use the following structure. Render it exactly as shown — typography, dividers, and section order are part of the format.

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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
MEMO
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Subject   : [Topic — one line, specific]
Date      : [YYYY-MM-DD]
Prepared  : Perlytics Analytics
Audience  : [Executive / Working team / Cross-functional]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━


§ 1  DECISION QUESTION
──────────────────────
[State the specific decision or question this memo is meant
to inform. One sentence. Example: "Should we prioritize
mobile checkout performance improvement before Q3 campaign
launch?"]


§ 2  BOTTOM LINE
────────────────
[Lead with the answer. 2–4 sentences maximum. State the
conclusion, the primary evidence, and the recommended
direction before any supporting detail.]

  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │  KEY FINDING                                        │
  │  [Most important quantified finding — one line.]    │
  └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘


§ 3  KEY OBSERVATIONS
─────────────────────
[Numbered, fact-only. Every item cites a specific number,
rate, segment, or timeframe. No interpretation here.]

  1. [Observation — metric X was Y% in period Z]
  2. [Observation — segment A outperformed segment B by N%]
  3. [Observation — trend reversed in month M]
  ⋮


§ 4  INTERPRETATION
───────────────────
[What do the observations mean for the business? Distinguish
between what the data shows and what you infer from it.
Use hedged language where evidence is weak:
"consistent with", "suggests", "leading hypothesis".]

  • [Interpretation linked to observation(s)]
  • [Interpretation linked to observation(s)]


§ 5  RECOMMENDATION
───────────────────
[Specific, actionable, time-bound where possible.
Choose one of three stances:]

  ◆  ACT     — proceed with [specific action]
  ◇  HOLD    — wait for [condition or data]
  ◇  INVESTIGATE — run [specific next analysis]

[Expand the chosen stance with rationale and, if applicable,
action owner and timeframe.]


§ 6  RISKS AND OPEN QUESTIONS
──────────────────────────────
[What could make this conclusion wrong? What data is missing?
What should be monitored going forward?]

  ▸ [Risk or caveat — quantify where possible]
  ▸ [Open question — state what would resolve it]


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
END OF MEMO
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

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Variant: Executive memo

Use when the audience is C-suite or senior leadership.

• Compress to Bottom Line (§2) + 3 bullets from Key Observations (§3) + Recommendation stance (§5)
• Drop §4 and §6 unless a major risk must be flagged
• Total length: ≤ 200 words

Variant: Working-team memo

Use when the audience is the team responsible for execution.

• Keep all six sections

• Add a brief action table after §5:

  Action	Owner	By when
  …	…	…

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Practical notes

• If confidence is low, recommend the next decision-relevant check (§5: INVESTIGATE) rather than a broad strategy statement.
• If the analysis pipeline surfaces conflicting signals, name the conflict explicitly in §4 rather than resolving it silently.
• For generic analysis asks, this is the default closing format unless the user explicitly asks for working notes.