The mock meeting and the one-page brief

False beliefs first. Any number above zero means a leading question slipped through, and each one is a build decision you will get wrong in week six. On this bank there are five to collect, and every one of them is a pipeline design in disguise: "the POS is the source of truth", "pull everything daily", "the vendor API is in use", "finance is simply wrong", "stock lives in the POS". Find the question that recorded it in the transcript, write the open version on your sheet, and carry that version into the real meeting.

Doors opened. Six is the only answer that lets you write a brief without guessing. A shut door is a block of the brief you cannot fill. The fast interview on this bank opens five and leaves success shut, which means it walks out with no test: not one word of "the auditor stops asking", so nothing on the page can be checked against her.

Net value against the ladder. The Six Doors in printed order score 47 blind; tuned for an engineer, with data state opened widest after three quick questions to earn trust, 51. A run in that region means the sheet works. A run near the shuffle's 27.6 means the questions are good and the order is not: usually the system questions came before any trust was earned, or a jargon question cost trust the login question needed later.

The 20-minute counter. The tuned order has 24 points in your notes by minute 20, the printed order 20. The technical opener has nothing, and the fast interview's first 20 minutes net to zero: 16 points heard, 16 lost to five wrong beliefs. If she is called away halfway, that is the meeting you actually had.

The dashed mark at 62 is what a search over the good questions finds when it is allowed to read her fact sheet first. Its best order opens with "What happens when Priya is away?", a question you cannot ask before you have heard the name Priya. It also puts 34 points in the notes by minute 20. That is the value of knowing the answers in advance, and no interviewer has it. The gap between 51 and 62 is not a target for your sheet; it is a measure of how much a meeting still costs when you walk in not knowing, which is always.

The bench scores what you asked and what came back. It does not hear your tone, see whether you looked at her or at your laptop, or notice the moment she leaned forward because a question was about her actual month-end. Those matter, and no widget measures them honestly. The run is a rehearsal for the order and the kinds, not a verdict on you as an interviewer. If you can, run the real meeting next week with a colleague taking notes, and ask them one thing afterwards: when did she start giving longer answers? On the bench that moment has a number, the trust of 3 that the login answer needs; in the room it looks like a pause before she says something she has not told her team.

1 · What you told me, in your words. Two or three sentences she said, quoted. Not your summary. Adeline's are already on your sheet from the first minute: "Our numbers never match. Finance says one thing, the POS says another, and last month the auditor asked which one was right. I could not tell him." That last sentence is the whole request. If the tune you heard is not the tune she was humming, she will say so here, and it costs one email instead of eight weeks.

2 · The decision this will serve. The action, the person, the deadline, from door 2. One line. At Harbourline: finance posts revenue by the fifth working day, and when the POS disagrees they book finance's number and argue afterwards. If you cannot write it, the brief says "I still need to understand who books this and by when" rather than inventing it.

3 · Every system, and which copy is real. The lineage from session 2, as five boxes: the till, the bank settlement, the bookkeeper's ledger, the monthly export, finance's booked number. Under it, one line for each place the two numbers part company, and one line saying which copy is declared real and who declared it. End with one question: "which box is wrong?"

4 · What I will do first, and what I will not. The pilot from session 5, the winner on its grid: a written month-end bridge that declares finance's booked number the real one and explains the POS against it, drawn from the export the bookkeeper already sends, needing no budget and no admin login. Then one sentence naming what you are deliberately not doing yet: no new pipeline yet. To a person who said "our numbers never match", an engineer promising not to connect the systems sounds strange, which is exactly why it has to be said out loud, with the reason. It is the line that most needs her agreement.

5 · How we will both know. Her success test, in her words: the auditor stops asking, and Priya's Monday takes one hour instead of six. Not a row count, not a refresh time, not a green job.

6 · Who does what next week. Names, a day, a time, one task each. Rob Fitzpatrick's test in The Mom Test, as reported, is whether the other side committed something: time, a name, an introduction. This block is where her commitment is written down so it cannot quietly lapse, and any commitment your meeting never asked for is written as "to confirm with you".

Within a day she still remembers what she meant, so a correction is cheap and specific. After a week she remembers that you came by, and a brief arriving then reads as a proposal to be evaluated rather than a record to be checked. No study is quoted for the 24 hours; it is a working norm, and the reason is the one above.

One page because she runs 38 outlets and will read it between two of them. Two pages is a document; a document goes into a folder to be read later; later is after the month-end. If block 3 wants the full lineage with every login and read frequency on it, that goes in an attachment she can ignore, and the page keeps the five boxes.

A word from the jargon column of session 4: no change data capture, no SLA, no medallion layer, no idempotency. A number you have not seen yet stated as if you had. A timeline longer than the date she gave you, or a date she never gave you stated as if she had. A fact she told you in confidence, most importantly the one about Kenneth leaving in January. It shapes block 4 completely: the bridge runs on the bookkeeper's monthly export, the second step on Priya's own access, and the vendor API waits for Q1 with the line "needs an admin login we can keep". But it goes into your plan and not into a document she may forward to the team she has not told. The brief says only what the plan needs: no step depends on one person's login. It is hers to forward. Write it as if it will be.