Three CEO workflows you can install this week. No engineer required.  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌
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ISSUE 04 · THE THURSDAY 3 2026.05.28
 
DeskTheory

Three workflows that put you in the top 1% of CEOs.

 
 
WORKFLOW / 01

Ask your meeting history anything

 
> OUTCOME

A query interface that sits on top of every meeting you've recorded. Open a terminal in your transcripts folder, ask in plain English, get a structured answer with verbatim citations. It's the single highest-frequency tool in my stack. I run it ten or fifteen times a day.

> SETUP

Claude Code, pointed at the folder where your Granola transcripts already live as markdown. No new install. No SaaS. No script to maintain. The interface is claude code in a terminal; your meeting library is the folder you already built.

> YOUR NEXT STEPS

cd into your notes folder, type claude, and ask one specific question you wish you could remember the answer to. What did our chair flag in the January call? Open the cited file. Watch the magic.

 
 
  Full step-by-step instructions _
 
 
WORKFLOW / 02

A senior analyst, baked into Excel

 
> OUTCOME

Top-1% Excel competence, even if you've spent the last decade copy-pasting SUMIFs from old workbooks and praying. Models built from a prompt, in real cells, with real formulas. Sweeping edits to ugly workbooks in plain English. Pasted screenshots rebuilt as live sheets.

> SETUP

The Claude for Excel add-in (Insert → Get Add-ins → search "Claude") plus your paid Claude account. The plugin lives in your ribbon from then on; every workbook you open can talk to Claude.

> YOUR NEXT STEPS

Install the plugin tonight. Tomorrow, take your ugliest workbook and rebuild it with one prompt. Send the rebuilt version to one person on your finance team. Watch what they say.

 
 
  Full step-by-step instructions _
 
 
WORKFLOW / 03

Action items that deliver themselves

 
> OUTCOME

Every action item from every meeting lands in each owner's Slack DM minutes later, with the verbatim source quote attached. Your team has their list. You stop being the unpaid project manager for promises your team made to themselves. The chase tax disappears.

> SETUP

A roster file at ~/team.md, an extraction prompt at ~/.claude/prompts/team-todos.md, and a small Slack-delivery script Claude writes for you. Pairs with the commitment ledger so nothing falls through the cracks on either side of any meeting you run.

> YOUR NEXT STEPS

Three minutes in your next leadership sync: tell your team this is coming. Write the roster. Wire the prompt and the delivery script. Reply to the first DM yourself ("looks right") so the behavior is modeled. Reclaim the chase tax.

 
 
  Full step-by-step instructions _
 
Andrew
P.S. Card 1 and card 3 run on the same meeting library. Card 2 stands alone. The pattern is identical: install once, run forever.
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desktheory.com  ·  archive  ·  written by Andrew Lissimore
ISSUE 04 · 2026.05.28