Before a board meeting, put the pre-read, the decision you are asking for, and the prior minutes into one request and instruct Pingpong to list the hard questions each director seat is likely to ask, saying whether the pack already answers each one and where. Do this while you can still add a backup slide or prepare a spoken answer.
This guide is for that question list. For a full role-play as the director most likely to vote no, see role-playing the board skeptic. For a pass that quotes every claim the appendix does not support, see reviewing a board pack before the meeting. For a written reply after a director already asked, see reviewing a reply to a board question. Executive starting points live under Pingpong for executives.
What question anticipation is for
Directors arrive with notes that become the first questions in the room: runway impact, the hinge number, late-plan failure modes, first-month ownership, and how you will know the plan has failed. The drafting team already shares those answers in conversation, so the pack leaves them out. A useful anticipation pass names the questions by seat, points at the slide or silence that would trigger each one, and marks which answers are missing.
Board-prep tools such as Cueframe, JoySuite, and OnBoard AI hold related search for predicted director questions. Pingpong runs your pre-read through several models in sequence and returns questions tied to your documents.
A worked example
This example is illustrative and does not describe a customer. The chief executive of a 90-person software company plans to ask the board to approve a 12 percent list-price increase for mid-market renewals, expected to add about $2.4 million of annual recurring revenue over the next year. The pre-read is a 10-slide deck, a renewal cohort spreadsheet, and last quarter's churn analysis. Before the pack goes out, the chief executive puts five things into one request:
- The deck, the cohort spreadsheet, and the churn analysis.
- Minutes from the last meeting, where the board asked management to protect net retention above 105 percent.
- The ask in one sentence: approve the 12 percent list increase for mid-market renewals starting next quarter, with a go or stop review after two quarters.
- Named seats: the director most likely to vote no on pricing, the audit-committee chair who watches retention, and a customer-background director.
- One instruction: for each seat, list the first eight questions that director would ask aloud; for each question say whether the pack already answers it and quote the slide or line, or say the answer is missing.
A review that helps returns specific questions. The skeptical pricing director asks what net retention does if 15 percent of mid-market logos churn after the increase, and the pack only shows the base case. The audit-committee chair asks how the increase interacts with the 105 percent floor from last meeting. The customer-background director asks for the customer email and the exception path for multi-year deals already in negotiation; neither appears in the pre-read. The chief executive checks each flag, adds a slow-case retention slide tied to the floor, drafts the customer note as an appendix, and adds a one-page exception policy.
A request you can copy
Below are a board pre-read, the decision I am asking the board to make, and the minutes from the last board meeting. Read the pre-read as each of these seats: [list the director seats that matter, for example the director most likely to vote no, the audit-committee chair, and a customer-background director]. For each seat, list the first eight questions that director would ask aloud in the meeting. For each question, say whether the pack already answers it and quote the slide or line, or say the answer is missing. Call out any question that would force a change to the ask itself. Don't rewrite the slides.
Leave the minutes and the spreadsheet in. Questions often come from a gap between the deck and a number the last meeting already locked.
How the Pingpong web review app runs it
The web review app sends your request through several models in order. Each later model receives the original request and every earlier answer, with instructions to assess the work so far. An early pass might list questions for the first seat; a later pass might drop duplicates, check a cited slide, or add questions another seat would press. You get a final answer and can open each earlier pass. Check every cited slide and every "missing" label against the source files before you change the pack or rehearse an answer.
What a model review can't check
A model does not know which director has private history with your pricing, what was said after the last closed session, or which disclosure counsel already cleared. Legal, tax, accounting, and personnel matters belong with the person responsible for those answers. Use the question list to brief those conversations.
If you need the unsupported-claim pass on the same pack, see reviewing a board pack before the meeting. For an adversarial pass on pitch or strategy slides outside a full board pack, see stress-testing a pitch or strategy deck. For the steps in the app, see running your first review. More guides live under work decisions before you commit.