Doing the homework is only half the move, since Larry Chiang says the other half is telling the room that you did it. His PQRST checklist, preview, question, read, summarize, test, is how he builds that homework before he ever walks in. Preview means getting every document in advance, while question means flagging your fuzzy points instead of hoping nobody notices them.
Read and summarize force you to actually process the material, not just skim it the night before. Test is the last step, checking your own understanding against the material one more time before the meeting starts. None of that shows up in the room unless you say it out loud, which is the part most people skip.
Opening with I read the deck and I have three specific questions does more work than an hour of small talk. Larry treats this as a trust shortcut: stating your prep signals you respect the other person’s time before you have proven anything else.
It also sets up the pen-drop close later, since a prepared question naturally leads to a prepared point worth having them initial. Saying you did the homework only works if it is true, so the announcement has to follow the actual PQRST pass, not replace it.
People default to assuming you are unprepared until you tell them otherwise, so silence about your prep gets read as absence of it. Watch Larry walk through his PQRST routine and the exact language he uses to announce it in the room.
Details: Watch Larry’s PQRST routine
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