One of my favorite communication strategies for entrepreneurs post product/market fit is a weekly update email to all constituents: employees, advisors, mentors, and investors. Initially, the email should be pretty simple and then expand as the company grows and departments are formalized. Here’s an example format:
- Intro
- Quick paragraph summary of last week
- Culture Highlight
- A story or example from the week that exemplifies the company culture and recognizes one or more people
- Annual Goals
- Current metrics for the annual goals straight from the One Page Strategic Plan
- Quarterly Goals
- Current metrics for the quarterly goals straight from the One Page Strategic Plan
- Quarterly Priority Projects
- Percent complete and any updates to the most important projects straight from the One Page Strategic Plan
- Sales
- The top three weekly metrics for the sales team, or for smaller teams, the top three metrics for every person on the sales team (e.g. calls, appointments, deals won, new recurring revenue, etc.). By having every sales rep listed with their metrics, it provides transparency and peer-pressure to hit their numbers.
- Comments or highlights from last week (e.g. the name of a big customer win or story from the team)
- Marketing, Services, Support, Engineering, Operations, etc. (each has their own section, just like the Sales section)
- The top three weekly metrics
- Comments or highlights from the week
Yes, it’s more work on a weekly basis. Yes, it’s a commitment. Yet, when done consistently, this weekly update email is one of the best techniques for an entrepreneur to increase communication and transparency in a scalable way.
What else? What are some more thoughts on the weekly update email?
David Cummings on Startups 
It’s the small things consistently done that creates extraordinary results. If you want better results: 1) You must track / measure / adjust. 2) Find someone to hold you accountable. Thor Conklin
Fantastic idea, implementing this for staff communication internally today!
I’d also recommend coupling this with the 4dx (http://www.4dxbook.com/blog/tag/4dx/) concept of Lead Measures and how they drive Lag Goals. It’s a killer combo! Beyond the transparency and communication, it helps refine company culture towards a playing to win mindset.
Alex, you are spot on.. we are combining 4dx with transparency to drive results and accountability