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Team communication has to start at the top, but the CEO/Founder doesn’t have enough time in the day to check all their boxes and send out regular company updates. That’s why we created the perfect CEO Update Template!
It’s not that CEOs don’t want to keep their team informed, in fact they know that regular communication is tied deeply to employee engagement, morale, and retention. It’s just that writing is hard and even the most well-intentioned CEO will come up short when staring at a blank page.
If this sounds like you (or someone at your org), we’ve got the perfect template to use that takes away the blank page forever:
Click here to get a closer look and send this template to your team today?
Okay, let’s break down what makes this template work.
CEO Update Template Overview
The point of regular internal communication from the CEO is to get the company aligned on vision, what’s being worked on, and provide a personal touch from the CEO.
You’re going to want to send this out either weekly following all hands meetings or monthly.
Regardless of the sending schedule you choose, make sure to announce that they’ll be receiving regular communication and to stay consistent!
The perfect CEO newsletter to boost internal team communication should be broken down into four main sections:
- Top of Mind
- How We’re Doing
- What You’re Working On
- Encourage Feedback
We’ll dive deep into each section down below 🙂
We’ve actually included this exact template in your Recess account. Don’t have one? Sign up today!
Section 1: Top of Mind
This is a VERY simple section that lists out the things that are top of mind for the CEO.
The key to this section is to keep it tight and share the overall issues that your employees need to know. Try to limit yourself to no more than 5 items! If everything is top of ming then nothing is top of mind.
A good rule of thumb when selecting what to include is to ask yourself, “What are the most important things ALL of my employees should be thinking about after reading this?”
This helps because what is on the top of mind for the CEO should definitely be top of mind for the organization as a whole.
Some things to include can be simple stuff like:
- An event coming up
- Company outings
- Team off-sites
- New product launch
- A big win
Section 2: How We’re Doing
This is the number one thing that everyone at your company wants to know.
Hopefully, as a company, you have stated company initiatives and goals. We generally recommend to have THREE MAIN company goals, key initiatives, pillars, rocks, or whatever you call them…
If you haven’t stated your goals to your company at large yet, then this would be a good thing to list in your Top of Mind section or to use this as a way to ANNOUNCE these goals.
For those of you with stated goals and objectives, this section gets REALLY easy.
You just need to list out your goals, add in the status, and share some key context.
Here’s an example:
Each week The Scalable Company reports their goals in their internal team newsletter. One of these goals was to generate SEVEN new predictable selling systems (PSSs) to generate more leads and sales in Q3.
In this example the goal is named, there’s a status update, and there’s a few sentences to provide some context for this particular goal.
Section 3: What You’re Working On
This section is optional, but encouraged, and is more of a miscellaneous section.
This is your chance to get personal. The first personal touch is to share what you’re working on.
This is a great way to not only keep people informed but also hold you accountable. You definitely don’t want to report on all the stuff you didn’t get to in your next internal team broadcast.
Some other great content to share is what you’re watching, listening to, and reading.
Have you ever though “I wish everyone on the team would watch this” or “I wish everyone on the team would read this”?
This is your opportunity to do just that and Recess makes it easy to share content with its Google Chrome plugin, Pocket integration, & RSS feeds.
Sharing what you learn and where you learn it from is one of the best ways to encourage growth and learning PLUS you get the added benefit of a company that has a shared vocabulary & understanding. Win-Win!
Section 4: Encourage Feedback
Now it’s time to close the loop. After you’ve effectively shared what’s on your mind, the state of the company, and what you’ve been up to it’s time to ask for some feedback.
We FULLY recognize that a CEO update may have more positive feedback than most of your internal team messages, but it’s always important to turn a broadcast into a potential conversation.
Now you’ll never have to look at a blank screen again when you’re updating your team!
If you’re looking to improve your team communication with regular internal newsletters, you need a Recess account. Team communication is harder than ever in a world where we need it more than ever.
