How do the twenty minutes run?
| Minutes | Segment | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| 0–3 | Recommendation on the table | BD states bid, no-bid, or review with one sentence, no preamble |
| 3–10 | Evidence per axis | Strategy, capacity, risk, facts with pointers, two minutes each |
| 10–15 | Disagreement round | Each veto holder speaks: cleared, blocked, or abstained; silence counts as abstain |
| 15–18 | Exceptions | Departures and conditions decided with owners and dates, or the call becomes review |
| 18–20 | Record | Call, vetoes, exceptions, recheck read back and written; see the decision record |
How do you handle disagreement and exceptions?
Disagreement is the point of the room; surface it by role, not by volume. Delivery blocks on capacity facts. Finance blocks on margin facts. The managing director breaks ties and owns the tie-break openly. Exceptions (departures from standard terms, conditional bids, qualification language) are not footnotes: each needs an owner, a due date, and a place in the record. An exception nobody owns is a review disguised as a bid; name it as review and set the recheck.
Authority for who decides what sits with who owns the call; this page runs the room inside that model. After approval, execution starts with the kick-off checklist.
What does this mean for the bid/no-bid call?
The meeting does not make a better call than the evidence supports; it makes the call explicit, owned, and written. Twenty minutes weekly beats three hours quarterly: cadence is the control. A firm that cannot fill twenty honest minutes has an evidence problem, not a meeting problem.