You are
the quarterback.
You make scope calls, enforce the cut list, hold the working agreement, and read the team's commitment aloud at 5:10 PM. You are also the one role on the team whose pre-flight starts a week before the day, because you run the self-assignment meeting that fills four other roles on your team. The Builder builds; you decide what gets built and what gets cut.
Eight items. Several have dependencies on each other and on Anuj's review window. Start at the top.
- 01
Read the spec end to end
Twice. The first read is for content, the second is for cuts. By the time you walk into the self-assignment meeting, you should be able to explain the spec to the team in 5 minutes from memory.
- 02
Receive and digest the role one-pagers and PO charter from Anuj
Six role one-pagers (one per role on your team) plus your charter. The charter tells you exactly what you own in the self-assignment meeting and on the day. Read both before the meeting, not after.
- 03
Schedule the recorded self-assignment meeting
All team members must attend. Calendar invite goes out at least 3 days in advance. Meeting body should include: the spec, the 6 role one-pagers, the recording-consent line, and the agenda. Schedule the meeting between 7 and 10 days before April 17 — close enough to feel real, far enough to absorb a re-shuffle.
- 04
Run the self-assignment meeting
Open with the spec walk-through (you, 5 minutes). Then walk through the 6 roles using the one-pagers. Then ask people to raise their hands for the role they want. If two people want the same role, you decide. If a role goes unclaimed, you assign. The meeting is recorded the entire time. The transcript is the team's first artifact.
- 05
Submit proposed assignments to Anuj within 24 hours
Anuj has a 24-hour review window to flag obvious mismatches. He overrides rarely. Most submissions go through unchanged. Don't wait — submit the moment the meeting ends so the review clock starts.
- 06
Brief the team in writing 2-3 days before the day
A short email or Teams message to all 7 (or 6) team members. Includes: the spec, the role assignments, the link to your team's pre-flight pages on csnycevent.com, the working agreement template, and a one-line reminder that everything is recorded. Set the tone as confident, not anxious.
- 07
Prepare the working agreement template
What gets locked in Discovery: where artifacts get dropped, the Builder's decide-without-me rule (90-second protocol), check-in cadence, what "done" looks like for the demo. Bring a draft to Discovery. The team will iterate on it in the first 60 minutes — but you bring the starting point.
- 08
Coordinate the team's recording mechanism with the Builder
The Builder picks the tool (Otter, Fireflies, etc.). You make sure it's actually running at 10:15 AM on April 17 when Discovery starts. The first 30 seconds of Discovery should be "recording is on, everyone confirmed."
Mindset, not tasks. The four things that should already be true between your ears when you walk in.
You are the team's quarterback. The Builder is the team's quietest voice.
Scope decisions go through you, not the Builder. The Builder is heads-down for most of the day; you're the one absorbing ambiguity so they can stay in flow. If the team is waiting for the Builder to make a call, you make the call instead and tell the Builder later.
Your job at 11:15 AM is to enforce the cut list.
The Builder identified the MVP slice and cut order during Discovery. As Build Sprint 1 progresses, you watch the clock and the cut list. If something is at 80% and time is short, you're the one who says "cut it, move on." The team will push back. You hold the line.
The 90-second rule is yours to enforce.
If the Builder doesn't answer a scope question within 90 seconds, you decide and move on. This is in the working agreement, but you're the one who actually applies it on the day. The Builder will thank you afterward.
You own the team's commitment in the Wrap Ritual.
At 5:10 PM your team comes to the front. You're the one holding the index card. You read the commitment aloud: ship to a named owner by a date, OR kill with a 1-pager by a date. The named owner is in the room. The date is real. Decide which form your team is taking before the Wrap starts — you'll have until ~4:45 to lock it during the retro.
The characteristic mistakes. Read them so you can notice yourself making one on the day and correct in real time.
Being polite when you should be decisive
Two people want the Narrator role. You need to pick one. Hesitating is worse than picking wrong — the team wants a tiebreaker, not a consensus facilitator. Make the call fast, explain your reasoning in one sentence, move on.
Treating the Builder as the scope owner
The Builder builds; you decide. If you defer every scope question to the Builder, the Builder can't build — and the team wonders who's actually in charge. When a scope question comes up, your default answer is not "let me check with the Builder," it's "here's what we're doing."
Skipping the working agreement step in Discovery
"We'll figure it out as we go" is how teams lose 20 minutes to "wait, who was doing that?" at 2:00 PM. The boring five minutes you spend writing down the working agreement at 10:30 AM is the highest-ROI five minutes of the day.
Letting the retro turn into congratulations
Retros are for honesty, not celebration. If your team walks out of the retro saying "we crushed it" and nothing uncomfortable was said, the retro failed and the team lost the learning. Your job is to ask the question that makes someone squirm.
The 45-60 minute meeting you run with your assigned team before April 17. Recorded end to end. The team's first substantive conversation as a team.
The shape of the meeting
45 to 60 minutes total. Scheduled 7-10 days before April 17 — close enough to feel real, far enough that Anuj can re-shuffle if needed. All team members attend; no skipping. Recorded from the first word to the last. Consent is in the meeting invite so nobody is surprised.
You are the facilitator. This is your first quarterback moment in the lowest-stakes possible setting — the warm-up for running Discovery on April 17.
The agenda you run
- 015 min
Spec walkthrough (you, from memory)
Open with a 5-minute explanation of what the product is, who it's for, why it matters. Don't read the spec — explain it. If you can't explain it without looking, you're not ready to run this meeting.
- 0215 min
Walk through the 5 non-builder roles
Click through the /pre-flight/[role] pages on this site, one at a time. Summarize each — what the role does, the stretch-or-experience framing, one failure mode. Do NOT read the pages aloud. Give the team the headlines and let them read the details later.
- 0320 min
Pick roles
Ask for volunteers, one role at a time. Start with Narrator (hardest to fill, most visible). Then Client Advocate (already locked to your VP). Then Market Analyst, Pricing Strategist. If the team is quiet, you suggest — "X, I think you'd be a great Narrator because of Y." Ties and gaps: see the picking rules below.
- 0410 min
Draft the working agreement
Where do artifacts drop? (Shared Teams channel? Folder? Claude Code session?) What's the check-in cadence during sprints? What does "done" look like for the demo? What's the Builder's decide-without-me protocol? Write it down. You'll refine it in the first 60 minutes of Discovery on April 17.
- 055 min
Commit and close
Confirm: every member knows their role. Every member knows the Friday briefing materials are coming 2-3 days before April 17. Every member has csnycevent.com bookmarked and has skimmed their /pre-flight page before the day. Thank the team. End the recording.
How to pick — ties and gaps
Ties — two people want the same role
You decide. Pick the person who will stretch more from the role, not the person who wants it most. If stretch is equal, pick whoever asked second — that prevents the first asker from dominating every round.
Gaps — no one wants a role
First try: offer it as a stretch opportunity. "This is the role where someone who's never pitched in front of the firm gets to try it — would anyone want to take that on?" If still no takers: assign. Name the person you think will do it best, and tell them why.
Overrides — someone picks a role that's wrong for them
The Narrator pick has never spoken publicly and is visibly anxious. The Pricing Strategist pick hates numbers. Pick someone else for that role, kindly but clearly. "I want you to take Market Analyst instead — here's why." Don't let politeness override good judgment.
After the meeting
Within 24 hours of the meeting ending, submit the proposed role assignments to Anuj — email or Teams DM. Format:
Builder: [name] — (already set)
Client Advocate: [name] — (already set)
Narrator: [name] — [one sentence on why]
Market Analyst: [name] — [one sentence on why]
{Market Analyst 2 if team of 7}: [name] — [one sentence]
Pricing Strategist: [name] — [one sentence on why]
Anuj has 24 hours to flag obvious mismatches. Most submissions go through unchanged. Once roles are locked, final briefing materials go out to the full team 2-3 days before April 17.
Don't do this
- ✕Don't fill your team with friends. The best team is the one where roles land with people who will grow from them, not with people you're comfortable with.
- ✕Don't let the loudest voice dominate every round. If the same person is volunteering for everything, ask the quiet ones what they're thinking.
- ✕Don't skip the working agreement because "we'll figure it out." You won't. You'll lose 20 minutes on April 17 to a question you could have answered in five minutes tonight.
- ✕Don't turn the meeting into a consensus workshop. You have decision authority. Use it — especially for ties and gaps.
Every working session on April 17 is recorded — including the self-assignment meeting you run before the day. The transcript of that meeting becomes your team's first shared artifact, and you can paste it into Claude on the morning of April 17 to ask “what did we agree on?” That's the practice the day is teaching: meeting transcripts are first-class context for the firm's LLM tooling, not ephemeral chatter.