A management operating system that runs on decisions, not status updates

The monthly business review template

Just need the MBR? Open the monthly business review template page →

The monthly business review (MBR) is the meeting that keeps the quarter honest. Once a month every department lead sits down with one goal: find what's stuck and get it moving. Done well, it catches drift in week four instead of week eleven, while there's still time to fix it.

What makes it work is simple: updates happen in writing before the meeting, so the time together goes to problems, not reports.

Step by step

1. Once, before the first review

   Agree the rules out loud

   Hold a short kickoff so everyone understands how the MBR differs from a status meeting. Agree three things and write them at the top of the agenda for the first quarter:

   • The date: same week every month, booked for the year.
   • What "at risk" means, for example more than 10% behind the expected pace.
   • The pre-read deadline: 48 hours before. No pre-read, no slot on the agenda.
2. 48 hours before

   Each lead shares a short pre-read

   One paragraph on how the month went, then the status of each objective they own, their biggest win, and exactly what they need from other teams. Keep it short. A long pre-read gets skimmed.

3. 10–15 min

   Read in silence

   Everyone reads every pre-read in the room before anyone speaks. It feels awkward the first time. Do it anyway: it's the simplest way to make sure each team gets real attention.

4. 15 min

   Status on screen

   Each department marks every objective as done, on track, at risk or off track. Put it on one screen so the room sees how many sit in each group, instead of hearing it one team at a time.

5. 40–60 min

   Deep dive on what's red

   Filter to at risk and off track. Done and on track don't need the room today. Each owner names the metric and describes the issue in two sentences, then the whole room works on unblocking it: resources, training, a trade-off between teams, or a decision someone has to make.

6. 10 min

   Agree the actions and read the decisions back

   Close with the actions everyone agreed to, each with one owner and one date. Someone reads the decisions back before people leave. If it isn't written, it wasn't decided. The decisions go straight into the decision log.

7. Between reviews

   Follow up before each date

   Owners get a reminder before their date, and anything slipping comes back as the first item of the next review, not as a surprise.

A 100-minute agenda

Rules that keep it working

• Start with what's red. Good news can wait. Spend the first minutes on what's at risk.
• Unblock, don't report. If an item only needs reading, it belongs in the pre-read.
• One owner, one date. Every issue leaves with a single name next to it.
• Disagree in the room. Once you leave, everyone backs the decision, including the people who argued against it.
• No objectives yet? Ask each department to bring its top three monthly priorities and review them the same way.

What to look for in monthly business review software

You can run an MBR with a shared folder and a calendar invite. Most teams stop running it that way by month three, because someone has to chase every pre-read and copy every action into another tool. Software earns its place when it does the chasing:

• The review repeats on its own, booked for the year, with reminders before the pre-read deadline.
• Pre-reads are collected in one place and summarised, so nobody opens ten documents.
• Status for every objective sits on one screen, filterable to what's at risk.
• Actions leave the meeting with an owner and a date, and the owner is reminded.
• Decisions land in a decision log automatically, without anyone copying them over.

A decision rights framework your team will use

Open the decision rights framework page, with the template and examples →

When nobody knows who decides, two things happen. Decisions wait in the CEO's inbox, or they get made twice by two people who both thought it was theirs. You see it in the business review as items that are "at risk" for a second month with no new information, only a missing decision.

A decision rights framework fixes that with one table. For each type of decision that comes up again and again, it says who decides, who gives input, who just needs to know, and up to what limit. Frameworks like RACI, RAPID or DACI all do some version of this. The names matter less than writing it down.

Step by step

1. List the decisions that keep coming back

   Go through the last three months of meetings, chats and your decision log. Write down every decision that needed someone's approval or got escalated: pricing exceptions, hiring, spend, launch dates, policy changes, client commitments. Most companies end up with 15 to 25.

2. Sort them by how hard they are to undo

   Decisions that are easy to reverse (a test campaign, a meeting format) should be made fast and close to the work. Decisions that are hard to reverse (a senior hire, a price change for every customer) deserve more input and a more senior decider.

3. Push each decision to the lowest level that has the information

   The person closest to the customer or the work usually knows most. Give them the decision, with a limit. Above the limit, it goes up one level, not straight to the top.

4. Write one row per decision

   Four columns are enough: Decides (one name or role, never a group), Consulted, Informed and Limit and escalation.

5. Decide where AI fits

   Agree which decisions AI can prepare (options, data, a draft recommendation) and which a person must make. Approvals, priorities, budgets and anything about people stay human.

6. Publish it and point to it

   Share it in the next all-hands. In the business review, when an item is stuck on a decision, check the table: if the decider is in the room, they decide now.

7. Review it every quarter

   Look for rows that were escalated often (the limit may be too low) and rows nobody used. Change them, log the change, and tell the team.

Decision rights example

Decision rights in Nova

Writing the table takes a spreadsheet. Making it stick takes putting it where the work happens. In Nova, decision rights aren't a template: they're part of every project. Each project has a lead who answers for the outcome. Each milestone and session has a lead and the collaborators whose input it needs. Steps that need a call have a key decision maker with a due date, and steps that need a sign-off have an approval that waits for one person, for several people, or for a chain that moves up level by level. See how decision rights work in Nova →

The decision log: your team's memory

Open the decision log page, with how it works in Nova and the habits that keep it alive →

A decision log isn't about a tool. It's about a habit. It's the running list of what your team decided, what changed and what happened, so nobody has to rely on memory, a chat thread or the person who was in the room.

Why it matters

• Settled questions stay settled. When someone reopens a topic, you link the entry instead of having the meeting again.
• New people catch up in an hour. The log shows how the work got here and why.
• Reporting gets easy. The business review, the client update and the board pack come from the log, not from someone's memory the night before.
• Problems show up early. Three delays logged on the same project in two weeks is a signal, long before a dashboard turns red.

How to categorize a decision log

Don't let people invent categories. Use a short fixed list, so the log can be filtered and read in a minute. These are the categories Nova uses in every project:

Give each entry a severity too: Info, Warning / Monitor or Critical. Leaders can then read only what's critical, and the business review starts from the warnings.

Build the habit: Monday and Friday

The template is never the problem. Most decision logs die in the second month because nobody built the habit. Make it a ritual with fixed times for the first month, and lead by example.

1. Every Monday · 10 min

   Look back and look ahead

   Each person adds the decisions made last week that aren't in yet, and any date that will move this week. The team lead opens the Monday meeting by reading the new entries out loud.

2. Every Friday · 10 min

   Close the week

   Log the wins, the deliverables shared and any blocker you're carrying into next week. Friday entries are the ones leaders read first on Monday.

3. After every meeting

   Read the decisions back

   End every meeting that decides something by reading the decision out loud and logging it before people leave. "Later" means never.

4. Every week

   Name one owner for the log

   One person, usually the project manager or chief of staff, checks on Friday that the week is complete and every entry makes sense to someone who wasn't there.

5. Always

   Don't delete, supersede

   When a decision changes, add a new entry and mark the old one as superseded. The history is the point.

After four to six weeks, people start checking the log before they ask. That's when you know it worked, and when Monday and Friday can become "log it the moment it happens".

The decision log in Nova

In Nova, the decision log isn't a template or an extra tool to maintain. Every project has one from the moment it's created, and it fills up as the team works.

• Saved as you work. Session conclusions, decisions, approvals and deliverables shared are saved to the project's log, and anyone can add an entry with Log an update.
• Who and when. Every entry records who added it and the date and time, so the project keeps its full history.
• Categorized. Each entry is a decision, a deliverable, a delay, a date change, a win or an issue.
• Easy to find. Filter by category, or search, to find what was decided months later.
• The how and the why. Each entry comes from a session, and the session keeps the steps, inputs and options that led to it. A log tells you what was decided; Nova also shows you how the team got there.
• Decisions and approvals inside the process. Add steps where key people make a decision or approve something, and their call is saved to the log too. Nova AI helps keep the log complete by picking up key decisions, delays, deliverables, wins and issues from the team's sessions and updates.

Want a copy-and-paste version first? The decision log template guide has the columns and example entries.

How to prepare for and run a board meeting

Open the board meetings page, with the agenda template →

A good board meeting is mostly done before anyone walks in. The pack is read, the questions are in, and the time together goes to the one or two decisions where the board's experience is worth the most. If you already run the business review and keep a decision log, most of the preparation is collecting what you have.

Step by step

1. 4 weeks before

   Set the agenda with the chair

   Agree the two or three topics that matter most this quarter. Mark every item as for decision, for discussion or for information. If nothing is for decision, ask why you're meeting.

2. 3 weeks before

   Assign each section an owner and a date

   Finance owns the numbers, each leader owns their area, the CEO owns the letter. Owners pull from the last three business reviews and the decision log, so nobody starts from a blank page.

3. 2 weeks before

   Build the board pack

   • A one-page CEO letter: what went well, what didn't, what you need from the board.
   • Key numbers against plan, cash and runway.
   • Progress on objectives, with the same status as the business review.
   • Actions from the last meeting, and what happened to each.
   • The decisions you're asking for, with options and your recommendation.
   • Top risks, and changes in the team.
4. 5–7 days before

   Send the pack and collect questions

   Ask board members to send their questions in writing at least two days before. Answer the factual ones in writing, and keep the meeting for the ones that need discussion. Bad news never arrives first in the pack: call board members before you send it.

5. The meeting · 2–3 hours

   Discuss, don't present

   Assume the pack was read. Take routine approvals together as a consent agenda, give a short CEO update, and spend most of the time on the strategic topics and the decisions. End with a closed session without management if your board uses one.

6. Within 48 hours

   Minutes, decisions and actions

   Send the minutes, log every decision and turn each follow-up into an action with an owner and a date. Those actions open the next board meeting.

Board meeting agenda example

Tips from boards that work

• No surprises. Anything bad gets a phone call before it gets a slide.
• Ask for a decision, not a reaction. Bring options and a recommendation, and say what you need.
• The pack is the pre-read, not the presentation. Nobody reads slides aloud.
• Same structure every quarter. The board learns where to look, and you prepare faster.
• Keep a monthly update between meetings. A short written note so the quarterly meeting never starts cold.

What board meeting software should do

Most board portals store documents. The hard part is everything around them: getting six sections written on time, getting questions in before the meeting, and making sure the actions happen. In Nova you run the board cycle as a process of connected sessions. Each section of the pack is a step with an owner and a due date, Nova AI drafts the numbers summary from your business reviews and the decision log, board members join as collaborators to read the pack and leave their questions before the meeting, and the minutes, decisions and actions are logged and followed up afterwards.

Run it in Nova, starting this month

Want all of it set up for your leadership team? See the Executive Operations workspace →

Nova is where these rituals run instead of living in a document. The processes, the people, the decisions and the AI sit in the same place, so the business review feeds the decision log, the decision log feeds the board pack, and nobody copies anything from one tool to another.

1. Start the Monthly Business Review template

   Open it from the process library. It comes with the steps, the questions and the timing built in, and you can watch a short video of how it runs before you start.

2. Adapt it to your team

   Add your department leads, set the date for the year and connect it to your calendar, so the recurrences and reminders run on their own.

3. Give AI the preparing and the chasing

   Nova AI summarises the pre-reads, writes up the actions and reminds owners. Your leaders keep the decisions.

4. Let the decision log fill itself

   Every session conclusion lands in the project's log. Add the Monday and Friday habit, and in a quarter you have the history your board pack needs.

Start my free MBR template

Frequently asked questions

What is a monthly business review?

A monthly business review (MBR) is a 90 to 100 minute meeting where department leads review the status of every objective, focus on what is at risk or off track, and leave with actions that each have one owner and one date. Updates are shared in a short written pre-read 48 hours before, so the meeting goes to solving problems instead of reporting.

What is a decision rights framework?

A decision rights framework is a short table that says, for each type of decision a company makes again and again, who decides, who is consulted, who is informed afterwards, up to what limit, and where it goes when it is above that limit.

How should a decision log be categorized?

Use a small set of fixed categories so the log can be filtered: decisions, wins, blockers and delays, critical issues, deliverables shared and date changes. Add a severity (info, warning or critical) so leaders can see at a glance what needs attention.

How far in advance should a board pack be sent?

Send the board pack five to seven days before the meeting, and ask board members to send their questions in writing at least two days before. That way the meeting goes to discussion and decisions instead of a presentation of the pack.

What should I look for in board meeting software?

One place for the agenda and the pack, a way for board members to comment and ask questions before the meeting, owners and deadlines for each section, and minutes, decisions and actions that are recorded and followed up after the meeting.